Adele Ward the poet at the bus stop

The Importance of Ebooks and Online Selling

2011-12-31T06:36:00.000-08:00

Over the festive period much has been said about ebooks and online selling, and in particular how rapidly sales are growing in this part of the bookselling market. Responses vary, with me sounding extremely encouraged by this, and some bookshop managers sounding worried – if you look on the Bookseller website you’ll see all sides to the argument.

The truth is that we absolutely need the ebook market to take off – whether we’re authors, publishers or booksellers. The crisis in bookselling is far more extreme than authors and readers realise, and publishers don’t want to dishearten authors by letting them know just how difficult it will be to sell their books should they overcome the first hurdle of getting published.

Ebooks also let publishers take on authors who are difficult to promote, perhaps because they live in another country and aren't available for the many events needed to help a book take off. Or they might write short stories, which are even harder to sell than poetry as there's no network of live events for short story writers. It also means publishers can take on long novels by debut writers, whereas the pagecount usually means the cost of printing and postage can't really be recuperated without a high cover price and/or high sales.

Bookshop managers tend to get defensive when they see the way ebooks are taking off. The Kindle sales this Christmas show that the UK is finally following in the footsteps of the US and the many people getting a Kindle as a present will no doubt follow up by buying some books for it. This is great news for publishers and authors at a time when companies are closing due to the difficulties selling our one product – books.

I do think bookshops can get in on the act too, rather than trying to defend an either/or position where ebooks are seen as killing the traditional bookshop which stocks books in print. There’s no reason why bookshops shouldn’t also have a screen where customers can buy the books they can’t find on the shelves and have them delivered straight from the publisher’s distributor to the customer’s home.

It would be just like buying on any other online bookseller site, but would be managed by the bookshop. And at last we would be able to order literary fiction, poetry and short stories through our high street bookshop if we wanted to, and not just the few they have in stock. Even the excellent bookshops that do stock plenty of poetry and literary fiction can’t stock everything, and they could offer everything publishers have registered on the central Nielsen database. Bookselling websites update automatically by feed from this, so it’s easy to manage.

Bookshop managers also complain that customers say they can get the books cheaper from Amazon, but customers know that Amazon isn’t reliable when it comes to supplying some of the books they take orders for, particularly poetry. Emails arrive for a few weeks saying the book is temporarily out of stock and finally that it’s unavailable. So I would certainly trust a bookshop more. I just feel that bookshops need to see this as an opportunity and adapt more than they’ve been doing so far.

With ebooks it’s tricky at this stage because Amazon dominates the market due to the popularity of the Kindle. But I’m not going to hold that against them and fight them over it. The situation will change. At this stage it’s helpful that Amazon is creating the market with the Kindle and Kindle books. We’d be doing a disservice to our authors if we didn’t go along with that and make all of their books available for the Kindle. Our fiction is all available for Kindle and we’re working hard on getting the poetry perfect at the moment – we didn’t stop over Christmas!

Amazon has a monopoly on Kindle ebook sales. But we’re also working on Epub versions which provide ebooks that can be sold on any website. This will provide even more of an opportunity for bookshops, authors, publishers, and anybody else, to sell direct from their websites. Amazon and Kindle are paving the way but it would be impossible to keep a monopoly in this market. It’s only possible to get an early lead.

What has surprised and encouraged me most this Christmas is seeing how ebooks have levelled the playing field between authors and publishers of all sizes. The major publishers have their huge budgets for promotional activities, which usually crushes others out. It’s impossible for a smaller publisher to get books stocked in bookshops over Christmas when major publishers have bought all the best space and there isn’t even shelf space left for new books by others.

I would have thought this would also affect ebooks and that titles by major publishers would dominate the list of bestselling Kindle books. And yet two out of the top four Kindle titles were by self published authors. They weren’t expensive ($3 and under) but they were for sale, so they weren’t just downloaded because they were free.

While one was a genre novel, and various genres do well on Kindle (it was the crime novel The Abbey by Chris Culver), the other novel sounds like literary fiction - Darcie Chan's The Mill River Recluse. The sales figures are also much higher than you might imagine and the books get into the New York Times bestseller list. High advances will be available from major publishers for those authors next time I think.

I’m not quite sure how these authors managed to compete with the promotional activities of the major publishers but I’ll be researching it in detail. If it really is possible to compete and win with ebooks then that certainly makes a major change in publishing, and we all need to take an interest.

Author Interviews: The Challenge of Live Radio

2011-12-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

As authors we all hope our books will get noticed and invitations to be interviewed on radio or television are highly desirable. But I wonder if any authors look forward to these interviews with anything other than dread when the lucky opportunities arise? I have a feeling we all brace ourselves, aware that we could slip up and make complete fools of ourselves by saying the wrong thing live to the listening audience, including people we know.

I could hardly bring myself to say on Facebook that I was on my way this morning, but steeled myself and posted the link, especially as we were giving away five signed copies of the book for the answer to a simple question. You can still find it on the Colourful Radio website if you’d like a shot at winning.

Having spent most of my working life as a journalist I also feel more comfortable asking the questions rather than answering them. Making a guest feel comfortable is what I enjoy doing, and when I’m the interviewer I really enjoy the excitement of live broadcasts. You’re never quite sure where the interview might take you, because an unexpected answer from the guest can totally change the direction of the discussion.

It didn’t help that the Victoria Line was in trouble today, with delays, and I needed to get from north London to Vauxhall in the south in time for my live slot with Rosemary Laryea – a wonderfully professional presenter and interviewer. I got there by the skin of my teeth with just five minutes to spare, and Rosemary chatted to me and did a voice test while playing some of Colourful Radio’s gorgeous music.

The music is right up my street, so that was relaxing, and by the time the track ended we were ready for my first six-minute interview. Rosemary had told me she would then play another track and then we’d have another six-minute chat.

It’s incredible what a professional interviewer can cover in two six-minute conversations. For me it started to feel unreal once the headphones were on and I was trying to answer the unplanned questions without making a mistake. At times like that you go away unsure if you’ve given the right answers.

Usually when interviewed I make the mistake of speaking too fast to try to fit too much in, and I think that’s very hard for the listeners. Perhaps it was the early hour, perhaps it was the relaxing music, or perhaps it was the mantra I’d repeated all the way in the tube – ‘Don’t talk too fast, don’t talk too fast....’ but at least I avoided that pitfall.

It’s so hard to answer questions about a novel and fit your themes into a nutshell, but I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter. With more experience I suppose we can enjoy these chats and just make the most of them.

I had been invited to talk because the Colourful Radio book reviewer had been interested in the theme of homelessness in my novel Everything is Free, and particularly the fact that the main character Mel is a teenage runaway who moves into a shopping centre for warmth and comfort at Christmas.

I’m happy to talk about this theme and to draw attention to this issue. But I was also anxious because homelessness is just one theme in the book and the other major themes include racism and various types of prejudice including the way we view and treat women. One of the characters in the novel is in the BNP, and women are being watched on the sly using the CCTV system, while somebody in the darker corridors is attacking women.

Some of these themes can be difficult to talk about in a short interview, and I was wondering how the book reviewer on a black radio station might respond to my way of covering racism. I was both interested to get that feedback, good or bad, and also nervous. The review will be in another show, and in the meantime this broadcast is on Colourfulradio.com on the Rosemary Laryea page if you click on the show for the 8th of December in the 11am slot.

I’m glad I did it and I’m glad it’s over!

Sponsorship: Why We Sometimes Have to Turn it Down

2011-12-07T06:31:00.000-08:00

When Alice Oswald withdrew from the T S Eliot prize this week she attracted attention to what I feel will be a growing dilemma in publishing. I believe that sponsorship is an important way to move forward for those in the arts who have lost their funding, or who are starting new ventures with little chance of funding. But when we accept sponsorship we need to be very careful about who we are prepared to take finance from.

For Oswald, the sponsorship of an investment company involved in hedge funds was unacceptable. Soon after she stepped down from her place on the shortlist she was joined by John Kinsella, who left for the same reason. Perhaps by the time you read this more of the poets will have stepped aside. The shortlist is getting ever shorter, and I wonder if any poets have ever withdrawn from the T S Eliot prize before – it has long been considered one of the most prestigious awards in the poetry world.

I feel that sponsorship can work and we do invite this kind of funding at Ward Wood Publishing. However, I’ve talked to my publishing partner Mike Fortune-Wood and we both understand that we can’t take funding from just anybody. We don’t have adverts for all and sundry on our website, but we do talk to sponsors we would be happy to have associated with our name, and with our authors’ names. Reputation is so important in publishing and writing: it takes a lifetime to build and a moment to lose.

The Americans I’ve been involved with for years because of my nonprofit writing projects have shown me how they manage by attracting sponsorship, and I know it can work for small and large projects in publishing and the arts in the UK. This doesn’t have to be a large investment from one big sponsor – often they accumulate the finance they need from a number of smaller investors, including individuals just chipping in a little. I often chip in myself if the project is a good one.

The larger the amount sponsored, the more rewards the sponsor gets – usually including the publicity of having their name displayed as a generous patron of the arts. Smaller investors get other incentives – from the good feeling associated with making an arts project possible, to having some free tickets, or even greater benefits. I think all of this works well and is a good way to go. There are even websites dedicated to helping you raise funding in this way. If you know of any, please do post the links in a comment.

I do always want to reserve the right to turn sponsors down if I don’t want to be associated with their type of activity, or if I feel they’re offering me money because they want an exchange of favours I’m not prepared to take part in. Sometimes you don’t know what the exchange of favours will be, and sometimes you just have to be aware that the investor is giving you the feeling that they will one day ask for something in return. This can also be the case when people offer voluntary assistance with the workload. I’ve sometimes learnt the hard way over the years and it’s vital to make it clear from the outset that there is no exchange of favours. Sometimes I have to avoid some offers of voluntary help, much as it’s needed.

The Poetry Book Society seems to have made an error of judgement by accepting this sponsorship. On their site they have a message saying how gratified they have been to receive it for the next three years, and they have stuck to the decision by saying other arts projects also receive funding from similar businesses.

But if two out of ten poets on the shortlist have left because of this, then it’s clear that authors want ethics to be taken into consideration when sponsorship is arranged. Citing other festivals, literary prizes and projects that accept similar funding only draws our attention to the fact that we should probably be looking more closely at them too.

It’s a pity this has happened after a year in which we jumped quickly to help the Poetry Book Society when they lost their Arts Council funding. It puts the other poets on the shortlist on the spot, and it puts publishers like me on the spot too. It makes us realise we have to question the sponsorship behind projects we’re involved with.

It also makes all of the shortlisted poets, and us, think about whether or not we can continue our association with this award. Should we put our poets forward for the seasonal selections at the Poetry Book Society, seeing as any chosen will be considered for the T S Eliot prize? With two walkouts this year so far, we would really need to check with poets to see if they want their books to be submitted. Perhaps we shouldn’t make this decision as publishers, but let individual authors decide what to do.

The discussion among poets on social networks has divided opinion, although there’s a strong reaction against having sponsorship from a business involved with hedge funds. Some say that the loss of Arts Council funding means the T S Eliot Prize is at risk of closure if poets turn their backs on it in this way. But the prize is supplied by the T S Eliot estate, and the funding is for managing the award. Surely an ethical investor could be found, or a number of sponsors each providing some of the finance needed.

I do feel at times like this that I’d like more transparency and to see exactly how much money is spent and how. I don’t see how else I can decide whether or not an important literary prize is at risk of closure. I find it very hard to believe that it is. Arts Council funding may have been lost, but Arts Council funding is a privilege rather than a right and projects should always plan ways to manage without it.

There are so many people who work in poetry for little or no income, or finance publishing companies and other ventures because they believe in the importance of this artistic form. It’s hard to convince the poetry world that accepting sponsorship from sources they feel to be unethical is necessary just because the sums need to add up. It depends how much money you decide you need in a budget for each project, and if ethical sources aren’t available to pay the amount you want this means that the budget and the working methods have to change.

Mutual Support for Publishers and Authors: Bring and Buy Tables at All Events

2011-12-06T02:23:00.000-08:00

There’s a serious crisis in bookselling. We do all know this but I wonder sometimes if people realise quite how serious it is.

As authors we’re artists, of course, and many independent publishers are also authors who are in this to keep outlets open for writers – I was told many years ago that you can’t make a business out of poetry and it’s true. As authors and publishers we have one product – books – and if they don’t sell then there’s no way to finance print runs. It’s as simple as that.

You might think this doesn’t matter, and that ebooks are the way to go. You may dislike the words ‘business’ and ‘finance’ used when talking about artistic creation. But if we want to keep printed books going we do need to look at ways to get enough sales to pay for the print runs.

Even if publishers choose to use print-on-demand, books do need to be printed in quantity because most authors and publishers tell me that 90% of poetry books sell at events. So you do need to have a stock, and print-on-demand can actually work out more expensive.

One way of increasing sales and keeping print runs going is by providing mutual support at events. Publishers and authors can work together, and not in competition, to try to get those essential sales to keep trickling along. This isn’t unusual in small press publishing, but we can find more ways to do it.

The first Poetry Book Fair in London this year showed how well this can work. Charles Boyle of CB Editions had the idea and was surprised by how many independent publishers wanted to book a table and a reading slot at the event. Even though it wasn’t an easy venue to get to, the fair was packed from morning to evening and people were buying books.

It was also great fun and wonderful to get together with such a great bunch of publishers, poets and book buyers. We don’t have many chances to see each other all in the same room for a day.

The only downside was that we really need this to be happening more regularly. I’m going to be drawing more attention to the ‘bring and buy’ book table at the Friday Night Writers events I organise in London, so that more audience members realise they can bring along any books they have published (or magazines). These can be displayed alongside the books brought by the main performers at each event.

So, events can be like a small market. It’s possible to set out a couple of books at a time, with more in your bag to replenish the stock if and when your books sell. Audience members can also make announcements about other relevant news items such as competitions they’re organising, or their own events. They can display flyers on the table.

Although I set up Ward Wood Publishing with Mike Fortune-Wood in summer 2010, I’ve been working on writing projects for much longer than that, and the events I hold are to support a variety of publishers and authors rather than just our own company – this has always been my approach on other ventures. Most of the authors who have been booked to read at Friday Night Writers in Swiss Cottage Library have come from other publishing companies.

It’s expensive for publishers and authors to find a venue or to get booked in London, so I’m hoping this helps. I would love to hear about more similar projects all around the UK and Ireland – and our authors do travel, particularly to the US, so do let me know about any venues there. The Twisted Pepper and the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin are two particularly good venues which have been approachable for new authors.

I don’t have any funding for the events, so can’t cover travel costs or pay a fee, but authors have found it a useful venue when they’re passing through London, and with two events a month I’ve managed to fit them in on convenient dates. This has the added advantage of bringing together authors from various regions – it’s surprising how regional we can become at times, especially in the poetry world.

I don’t believe the saying ‘Poetry is a small world and everybody knows everybody’. It’s easy to become part of a clique and not see the poets who are just off our radar. Making events open to authors from different publishers, and from different regions – even if they aren’t people who can normally support the event – can put a larger number of authors on to our radar. We can never know all the good poets who are out there.

I keep mentioning poetry, but the same is true of literary fiction, and it would be good to see an independent publishers’ fair that included both fiction and poetry. Many presses publish both forms, and it’s hard to help novelists get started because they lack the network of open mics and events that’s so well established and helpful to poets.

There is the opportunity to read fiction at Friday Night Writers, but I need to ask for maximum 500 words now due to the popularity of the event. With the event anthology there’s another chance to support a variety of publishers as well as aspiring writers. Authors can read from a published book at the Friday Night Writers open mic, and they can submit a published piece of writing to be considered for the annual event anthology. This would mean a credit for the published book should their submission be selected.

The next event is on Friday December 9th, with Sue Rose as the main reader, and open mic with a chance to submit to the annual anthology. As it’s our last Friday Night Writers before Christmas it’s a good chance to have a bit of a ‘bring and buy’ book market, so don’t be shy about bringing along some books to display. If you set them out a couple at a time we’ll have space for everybody. And there will be mince pies and other goodies too!

By keeping admission free, and by charging just £1 for wine (proceeds go to the library user group fund) I hope the event is accessible to everybody, and also that it’s more tempting for audience members to buy a book from the table – by whichever authors and publishers appeal most.

Publishing and Charities: Supportive or Exploitative?

2011-12-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

As a publisher supporting a charity at events and also with a competition offering publication of a short collection to the winner I’m very aware of the dangers if this is handled in the wrong way. Publishing can really help a charity – the Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition attracted more than 1,000 entries in its first year and raised more than £2,000 for the homeless in two North London Cold Weather Shelters.

Sales of the short collection we published for the winner (An Apple Tree Spouts Philosophy) are still adding to that figure, and the competition also helped launch the winner Caroline Squire as a poet who deserved to have a book out and to be noticed.

I was immediately approached by agencies wanting to manage this competition and publication for us, which draws attention to the fact that there’s money to be made from such ventures. Of course I didn’t accept these offers. None of the organisers of this competition take a penny in income, so there would be no commission for an agency.

The idea for the competition came from Ruth O’Callaghan, the poet who runs the twice-monthly Lumen and Camden Poetry Series of events, combining poetry performance by published poets with open mic from the audience and the chance to submit to her annual charity anthology. These events and anthology add about £4,000 more to the total raised for the homeless.

All of this raises a high percentage of the money needed to keep the Cold Weather Shelters going – the last time I heard it was 60% and I’m sure it’s still growing. So it’s a good thing when publishers support charities, isn’t it? Or are there mistakes that can be made?

An article in The Big Issue this week reminded me of the risks, and I’m more than aware of them already. In the article readers were warned about online sellers offering Christmas cards to support charities. Even the reputable shops selling greetings cards for charities typically give only 20-25% to the cause, perhaps less. At the most, a good retailer like WH Smith, might give 70%.

This is often used purely as a way of boosting sales, and a number of the online sellers pay a minimal 1% to the charities. So, supporting a charity can be part of a marketing drive, rather than a genuine effort to help.

As publishers, authors, and book buyers we need to be aware of this, and as competition entrants too. When we see that a competition, an anthology asking for submissions, or any book is being sold in aid of a charity, we need to know how much of the income is actually going to be handed over.

As a publisher I’m very aware that I could get this wrong, and the only way I can see of doing it is if we take absolutely nothing for Ward Wood Publishing and give all proceeds to the charity. Carol Ann Duffy takes no fee for judging the competition, and Ruth O’Callaghan also works with me at organising the entries and passing them on. Taking no income from charity work does simplify matters.

I do understand why publishers sometimes take a commission for this work and I don’t blame them for it. The work involved in organising and promoting the competition was pretty heavy. I was worn out by the time the deadline arrived. If you don’t keep promoting a competition you risk getting too few entries and we wanted to raise as much as possible for the charity.

The entries had to be accepted, entrants advised that their entry had been received if they paid and submitted via the website, and all entries passed to Ruth O’Callaghan who then organised it for Carol Ann Duffy. The number of entries as the deadline approached meant I was dealing with a huge amount of email.

But I’m not sure a commission based on a percentage of fees or sales is the right way to respond to this kind of workload. Generally, when publishers produce anthologies for charities, they might charge a 30% admin fee. I’m not sure how much agencies charge to organise this for a publisher. When we were organising the competition last year people told me I should be taking this fee.

I wouldn’t have felt happy about taking £600 from the £2,000 we raised, because I don’t think people entering a charity competition would be expecting that, so I didn’t want to take the standard 30% admin fee. People want their entry fees to go to the charity. I think people would accept specific costs being taken from the entry fee, such as printing and postage. We did calculate just over £100 for this as these are unavoidable costs and we arranged as low a fee with the printer as we could.

It’s better to detail these costs and explain clearly how much is to be taken out of the proceeds. A 30% admin fee could be very little, or it could be way too much in the case of a successful competition like ours. It wouldn’t cover the hours we have to spend working on it, but I’m not comfortable taking an income from any charity project.

Of course, this means we can’t do too many. We can probably only do one or two because the work has to be completely voluntary. But, in my opinion, this is the only way to go. People may disagree with me. It might be that it’s seen to be a good idea for publishers to make income from taking a percentage from charity publications, and agencies may also be welcome.

Charity anthologies do offer all the writers submitting a chance to get into print. They can supply some income for the publisher – perhaps a reasonable amount to cover the hours spent working. And they support the charities.

All opinions would be welcome on this subject. I’ve been careful about it since my first collection was accepted in the 1980s and I wanted to support the homeless in a Kilburn soup kitchen and hostel with a percentage of the sales income. The publisher advised me not to, as he said too many people did it and it could look like a marketing ploy to increase my sales.

Occupy Books: A Naughty Suggestion

2011-12-02T01:26:00.000-08:00

There’s a simple solution that can help us fight the way we’re going to have heavily marketed books thrust in our faces in bookshops and supermarkets all through the gift-giving season. It’s a bit naughty but could be a fun idea for the weekend. It’s the book-lover's silent but effective protest.

What you do is this. You go into the bookshop, careful not to look with distaste at the piles of books in prominent positions on the display tables. Just saunter along as you would usually and browse along a few shelves, picking out books at random and putting them back.

Then find a book you really admire and spend a little time with it. Wander along and select another. As you dilly dally along with your books, with that ‘Shall I buy?’ look on your face, choose an opportune moment and stick your favourite book on top of one of the piles on the best display table.

This works very well for novels and nonfiction. You might even want to put a cookbook with tasty recipes on top of Jamie Oliver’s barely edible inventions. Poetry is a bit more tricky.

If you can find the poetry books you like – in fact if you can find the poetry section at all (it will be very small and tucked away in a back corner or downstairs) you probably can’t get away with moving a book to the prime positions in the shop.

What you can do is take out the book you like best, read the blurb innocently, and put it back leaning against the others with its cover showing instead of spine only. It will look so nice like that. If you’re feeling very naughty you might find they have some special little stands tucked among the poetry books to display the usual suspects well and you can trump them with your selection.

Of course, you’re likely to find that the poetry collections you would most like to see displayed aren’t in the shop at all. Bookshops rarely take poetry, they dedicate a tiny set of shelves to it, and they’re unlikely even to take a good book sale or return. The shelves are crammed too tight already so they want to offload poetry whenever possible.

The only naughty answer to this is to follow the instructions in the Ann Drysdale poem ‘Between Dryden and Duffy’. Do Google it for the best methods – it’s one of the funniest comedy sonnets I’ve seen.

The poet in the poem looks along the shelf for her book, and when she doesn’t find it she clears that space between Dryden and Duffy and inserts one from her supermarket carrier bag. Of course, not all poet’s names fall into such a great position by happy accident.

So there are ways to get real books displayed. The prime display positions in the bookshops have been marked out and are all nicely prepared waiting for your choices. Something naughty to do at the weekend? I’m not going to admit if I’m already doing it.

Occupy Books. Celebrity Authors or Real Books?

2011-12-01T03:42:00.000-08:00

OK, I know some celebrity authors can write and some of their books are good. But after yesterday’s post people complained at the way the market this season is dominated by highly publicised books that will probably never be read – not even by the ‘authors’ as so many are ghostwritten. These books are just bought as easy and lazy gifts at the last minute. I thought I’d add some statistics to this about how publishing and bookselling trends affect authors and what we can do about it.

I admit these statistics were gleaned from the One Show (a popular evening chat show on BBC One, if you’re not familiar with UK television). This made it more comical for me, because Gyles Brandreth revealed some figures about aspiring authors, rejection figures, and who gets published and paid for books. He did all of this with celebrity author Celia Imrie beside him, just about to plug her book.

Gyles answered the question many people ask me – which is ‘How many people can actually make a living out of writing books?’ I’ve always made my living out of writing as a journalist and nonfiction book author, as well as working in publishing as an editor and now a publisher. But they mean books of fiction or poetry.

He revealed that 95% of books submitted to publishers are rejected. Of the 5% that get accepted, 75% of the authors will earn less than £20,000 per year for their book (and most books only sell well in the first year). £20,000 might still sound reasonable, but really the vast majority of these authors will be doing well if they sell between 1,000-3,000 books per year. That’s the usual figure, and I’ve heard that even with a major publisher, the debut novel can be expected to sell about 500 copies.

So, about 5% of authors who submit to publishers will be accepted, and they are most likely going to sell fewer than 3,000 books. Even if they get royalties of 10% of the cover price and the book sells for £10, this would be less than £3,000 income. But most contracts with major publishers aren’t based on 10% of the cover price. All costs are taken off first and you get a percentage of the profit.

A while ago I posted about literary agents and the kind of advance they told me they go for. The agent I spoke to is very good and aims for a £25,000 advance for authors as her income comes purely from a percentage of what the author is paid by the publisher, if she succeeds in getting authors signed. This is standard – if you get an agent they manage your income by receiving it from the publisher, taking off their commission, and paying you.

But usually an advance is £5,000 or less. The book sales have to pay back the advance to the publisher before any additional income is paid, and you can see by the average sales figures that this is quite hard to achieve.

Gyles finished off by saying what happens to so many of the books that are published but don’t sell in large enough quantities. They are used in the construction of motorways and he said how many miles they were supporting, but sadly I can’t remember. Apparently they form a good, shock absorbent type of support.

I do hear people saying they think much of this is new, but I first worked as a fiction reviewer and an editor in the early 1980s and I was told even then about the massive quantities of books that were published only to be pulped. Authors are just becoming more aware of the facts nowadays, probably due to more information being available online.

At the end of his commentary, Gyles pointed out that publishers were more likely to take on authors who were already celebrities. They’re easier to sell. It was quite a comical introduction to Celia Imrie talking about her new book and her mouth was in a very uncomfortable attempt at a polite smile. I must confess, I've read some of her book and she's very good.

I’m not against celebrity authors, because publishers and bookshops say they provide enough finance for a lot of their other work. Celebrity authors could help support the publishing of less commercial books, and could also help publishers take a risk on authors.

Bookshops do have limits due to shelf space – a problem I’ve only realised to be significant over the past year. They can’t just take a risk on a book that’s good even if it’s sale or return. They always want sale or return, and they don’t have space.

The figures shouldn’t be depressing. When rejection slips come in, they need to be cast aside quickly and not be offputting. It’s hard to get published, and it’s even harder for those published books to sell in order to stay on a publisher’s list. We all keep writing anyway.

We shouldn’t see publishers as the judges of whether or not our writing is good, but we often do. We certainly shouldn’t judge by how much our book sells either, or all poets would stop writing.

All of this does mean that independent publishers and truly independent bookshops need to be supported if we want publishing outlets for debut novelists, poets, and risk-taking authors. The only way this can happen is if they’re supported by buyers.

Major publishers poach safe bet authors from each other – or so the literary agent told me – and they also poach from independent publishers. To keep opportunities open for authors I suggest looking at the good independent publishers and bookshops this season.

Sorry to repeat this bit, but I’m not saying this to promote my company or any specific company. In fact suggestions for good listings of independents and good review sites would be welcome.

Occupy Books. Do We Want Our Books on Prescription?

2011-11-30T01:38:00.000-08:00

This week I found out that a high street bookseller who always stocks our latest books can’t take any books released by us this season. They want to stock the books and have asked me to come back after Christmas, when they will be able to stock them.

This was a bit of a shock, because of course this is one of them main times of the year when people will be looking for books as gifts. The manager liked our books – she wanted our books – but she told me that at the moment ‘It’s all prescribed’.

I looked into this and found out that major publishers pay to have their books stocked at Christmas, and the evasive word for this is that the books have been ‘prescribed’. Even publishers who normally get their books stocked will be turned at the door until this favourable time for bookselling has passed.

So, if you go into the main bookshops for your gifts, you’ll be getting them on prescription. The major publishers have paid to have certain books not only thrust in your face, but also to have other books kept out of stock until January.

We all know this happens to a certain extent all year – that the books on the best display tables have been paid for, and that the others only have their spines showing on shelves.

But I didn’t realise books that the shop managers would like to stock are turned away completely over Christmas because they haven’t been ‘prescribed’ with a hefty payment from the publisher.

This doesn’t just include books from smaller presses. It includes books in the mid-list from major publishers. The publishers decide which books we should be offered based on what they think can sell in large numbers, and they publicise those books in a number of ways to make sure people want them.

We know which books those are. Their celebrity authors have been appearing on TV chat shows recently. No doubt there will also be some good novels, but what there won’t be is a good range of choice and books stocked according to what the bookshop manager and buyers select on merit.

It’s always hard for me to get poetry books into these main bookshops, but they will support local poets so long as we have all our books in their centralised system, and we do. They do support all of our novels by stocking them, and also the Bedford Square 5 anthology. Just not while the books are stocked on prescription.

I’m not saying this in order to say ‘Buy my book’ or ‘Buy from my publishing company’ and I wouldn’t want Occupy Books to be a protest that’s exploited purely for marketing.

The only way to show how we feel about what one person called ‘corruption in publishing and bookselling’ when he explained prescription to me, is not to support the shops doing this and to look for books in a different way.

If you want to answer this post with suggestions, please don’t point to your own publishing company or book. Perhaps show good review sites about books from independent presses. Perhaps take a look on the websites of a number of independent publishing companies and buy direct from the publisher.

Or contact some of your favourite authors on Facebook and ask to buy signed copies direct from them. We can also ‘buy local’ and ‘buy direct’ for our books, if we don’t want them on prescription.

Fancy a Sing-Song?

2011-11-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

I finally took the plunge and joined Rock Choir today, and I must say it felt pretty nerve-wracking going along to the first taster session. Singing is something I’ve always loved, but I’m not sure people have always loved my singing. At school I was first to dash enthusiastically to ask to join any choirs and I’d sing my heart out in the front line – where I was put due to my tiny height as a child rather than any special skills.

My mother was always quick to point out every error after performances, but that didn’t stop me until teenage years made me that bit more easily embarrassed. Having my own children and taking them to music school for years got me singing again. I’m aware of my limitations though. I’m only any good in the mid-range and definitely can’t reach those high notes.

One of my friends at the Camden Poetry Series of open mics told me about Rock Choir last year. He hadn’t been coming to the poetry events for a while then turned up looking ten years younger and full of joie de vivre. He had recently married his gay partner, who also looked pretty pleased with himself, and I thought it was due to their honeymoon period. But no – he told me it was all down to his new passion for singing.

I looked up Rock Choir on YouTube and saw him singing in his local choir. There are Rock Choirs in many towns, and three in my local area, so I’m very lucky. There’s something about the whole Rock Choir idea that’s making it take off in a big way.

The final factor in making me join was that I realised I wanted one of the characters in my novel to join Rock Choir. Her teenage daughter is discovering a new form of youth feminism, and she herself needs to feel a bit more free. The theme of feminism is treated with comedy which has an underlying seriousness, and the ‘learning to sing’ theme is a tribute and echo of Erica Yong’s iconic ‘Fear of Flying’.

So I needed to do a bit of research by getting some Rock Choir experience myself. I’m so glad I did. There are morning, early and late evening choirs in my area, but I chose the morning one in Hampstead as I like to spend dinner-time with my two sons. People look at me a bit confused when I say early and late evening outings clash with ‘family dinner-time’. Is it really such a bygone idea? I do go out on Fridays to the open mics I either organise or help with, and I think that’s enough. We have a pizza or takeaway on those days.

But I was a bit worried in case the morning sessions had poor attendance – and was pleasantly surprised to find a lively group there. Rock Choir Hampstead is in the lovely Quaker Meeting House on Heath Street. It’s a building I’ve always wanted to look inside. The atmosphere is lovely with a view out and down the hill over Hampstead rooftops.

More importantly it was incredibly friendly. The sign-up online worried me as it said my free taster session wouldn’t guarantee me a place in a choir, although I could try out a number of choirs before choosing. What did this mean? Could I be turned down? Would I have to audition? Might my voice go all ‘pitchy’ with nerves, as they say on X Factor?

A friendly follow-up email reassured me. It told me I wouldn’t have to audition and that the session was for me to decide if Rock Choir was for me rather than vice versa. I was also told that somebody would be there to greet me, which she did, and she also seated me with somebody for the session.

We also get put into a section that suits our voices. I can’t hit the high notes so I was put in the lower alto group, and I was told I could move about if my voice wasn’t comfortable in that range. Each song gets taught by the teacher at the front, who has a keyboard and also a backing track. The teacher was highly skilled and could sing from bass to soprano, giving each of us an example of how to sing our parts.

Sometimes people think they can’t sing because at school we’ve had to try to hit the full range of notes. I was at an all girls’ school and the majority of the girls sang so high I really thought I was incapable. I just can’t get up there with my voice, but I can sing bass and lower alto. It was so lovely to be taught songs in a way that let me harmonise easily.

It does feel like being part of a professional choir, and the teaching is also professional but friendly. In fact the friendliness of the whole choir was more than I expected. Next week is the last of this term and we’re all going to have coffee together after the session. The group didn’t make me feel self-conscious as a newcomer, and most of them wanted to come and chat a little. I’ll be going along to Hampstead on Sunday to see them performing the songs they’ve perfected as the Christmas lights go on.

The morning session is much more popular with women, although there was one very happy looking man. I know the early and late evening sessions in my area attract even more people (there were about twenty at mine so there must be quite a large crowd at the others) and there are more people who work outside the home plus more men. So I’m sure everybody can find a choir to suit them – if you’re tempted.

I did sing along today although I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, and I’ll leave the dance steps until I feel I can co-ordinate myself when singing. They aren’t hard dance steps and more of a swingalong as you singalong. If you take a look on YouTube you’ll see. I think I’ll position myself at the back in any performances.

Joining was a good decision. I’m going to download the songs online and get myself ready for next week when we’re also starting to learn a new song. Today’s songs were Something Inside So Strong, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Valerie, Build Me Up Buttercup, and Anytime You Need a Friend. They say the songs are Motown, Pop and Gospel, and normally you get a number of sessions to learn each song.

Dear Publisher: Is it worth investing in an author website?

2011-10-31T04:24:00.001-07:00

My feeling is that a blog is more useful to authors than a website. It's also a good idea to set a day of the week when you commit to writing a blog post so that it's regular.

With a blog you can post a link on Facebook and other places, and people can interact with you. Seeing how you write on the blog also gives them an indication about whether or not they might like your writing style and empathise with your ideas.

You shouldn't be put off blogging if you don't see many people following your blog, because they might read it but not follow, and I know I have people who follow anonymously. You will also find they probably mainly answer your blog posts on Facebook when you post the link from there. So you might not get many comments on your blog, and that doesn't matter.

A website is a much more static affair. It has information and people will go for that, but you can find it's harder to get traffic to a website because it isn't updating as much as a blog. They will also only follow a link to a blog if you've written something that intrigues them, so it's not just about updating regularly.

With a website the information tends to be about the author, and there are so many authors out there trying to ask people to look at their websites and examples of their writing. So you have to tempt them in via a blog. They might then follow the link to your website.

All of these things work together - Facebook and other social networks, a blog, your website and your publisher's website. They should all be interlinked so people get interested by something you say and then follow the links.

We put a detailed author page on our Ward Wood website too, which also links to the author blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages, and websites. Plus we link to any videos and examples of work, and the book sales of course.

I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to invest in a website if you mean you intend to pay a designer. As authors we are constantly being approached by people who want to be hired for this work.

I've never had an author website myself as it has always felt like just one more place to try to attract traffic and the advice I've usually been given is to try to keep everything in one place online if it's possible. It isn't possible so I just try to narrow down the number of places people need to look for my information.

For the same reason I haven't set up book pages or a fan page on Facebook as I try to keep everything in one place - although I need a separate group page for Ward Wood and also for one of the Lumen and Camden Poetry series of events I help with (groups are needed to send invitations).

People who ask to be hired to work on author publicity tend to spend time setting up an author page on Facebook and book fan pages but I'm still to be convinced they actually help. I'm not always convinced hired publicists understand the best use of Facebook for authors.

I'm a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro on Facebook as he's too famous to be able to be on there personally, but I'm not sure fan pages for all authors serve a purpose. People want to follow us on one page - our main page I think.

Of course if you do have a website it will say as much about you as the cover design of your books. Will it be minimalist, with a pared down design that tells the world you're a literary writer? Will it be glossy and full of frills and show you're a commercial writer? Are you a bestselling author with readers who will expect an expensive looking design, or a poet whose readers really don't expect that? Or are you aspiring to be a bestselling author so it helps to look like one? Once you start getting into website design all sorts of factors have to be taken into account.

Readers don't have the same expectations about a blog - they want to see what you have to say, and if you're good at illustrating with artwork and photos then all the better. You need to ask yourself if you need a professionally designed website to reflect who you are as a writer, or is it enough to create what you need using Wordpress?

I don't think a website can hurt unless the design puts you in a category of writing you don't want to be involved in, and neither can a fan page or book page on Facebook - so long as we don't keep asking people to look at them as that just sounds like such a huge number of authors saying 'look at me and my writing' rather than 'I have this post on my blog which might be of interest to you.' It doesn't have to be about books and publishing. You may have something unique about your lifestyle and you can let us into it.

It can feel and look narcissistic to ask people just to come and look at us and our work. To have interaction with people online we have to genuinely be offering something they want and need, and we can do that with a blog. Of course, I also think we're offering something they want and need when we offer our books, but they'll decide for themselves which authors and publishers they like enough and they will buy their books.

Dear Publisher: My Present Publisher Isn’t Selling Enough of My Books

2011-10-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

There are some questions I get asked so regularly as a publisher that I’ve decided it’s best to answer them on my blog so I can point the enquirers to the answers, and also I think these must be the questions in many people’s minds.

Published authors from large and small publishing houses ask me why their books aren’t selling well enough – although the question is always framed to put the blame with their publisher.

What they want is to move to a publishing company they can see puts effort into promotional activities and also actively approaches bookshops to try to get authors on to their shelves.

These authors will often say their sales figures stick at about 100 books and they ask me if they should change publisher seeing as that figure isn’t high enough.

The answer depends on what exactly has been done by both the publisher and the author and why the figure has stuck at this level. Sales figures for poetry are known to be low, but authors can be surprised at how low the sales figures can be for a debut novel, even with a major publisher.

A literary agent and a literary publicist told me a debut novel with a major publisher may typically sell about 500 copies. Hopefully with subsequent novels that figure should grow, or the publishing house may need to end the contract. An independent press would keep an author on their list with sales at this level.

Authors can think that their publisher isn’t repping the books to shops if they don’t see them on the shelves, and they may think the publisher hasn’t promoted enough if the books don’t sell. But publishers often do a lot of this work without giving the authors details, particularly when submitting books for prizes as it could cause bad feeling among the authors if it’s known who was and who wasn’t put forward for an award.

The first thing an author may know from a major publisher could be that they have been shortlisted. Should publishers keep authors more informed? Or might it be more disappointing to know how much work is done if the results are not too good? I keep our authors well informed about everything we do. But I wonder if, for authors in general, it can be nice not to know the massive promotional effort publishers put in so that the publisher can be blamed for low sales.

The main publishers do also have a whole process for preparing Advance Information sheets and sending reps round to bookshops to show them what’s on offer (you can see examples of AI sheets on each author page on our website - they all have AI sheet links). The bookshops turn down most of the books repped to them. It’s incredibly hard even for a major publisher to get books into shops, where customers are likely to go in looking for the main names and titles.

But managers are likely to take books by authors who have a connection to the local area, and the automated system for ordering means you can just show them your book and they can click and order it at their till. I know I’m repeating this, but it’s less daunting than you think to take your book into bookshops and talk to the buyer. I’ve never been turned down yet if there’s a reason why a book is relevant to the shop I’m approaching.

If a book sells that first hundred then the publisher has launched and promoted it, but the publicity department will stop after a while and move on to the new season’s offerings. They will also be asked to focus on the books that seem to have most chance of taking off. So it does become the author’s task to focus on keeping the sales momentum going. At this point, authors write to me to say their publisher isn’t organising enough events for them. I’ve heard this about both large and small publishing companies.

It surprises me that so many authors feel this is something they should wait at home for until the publishers arrange events and send them the bookings. As an author I had always assumed this was my task, and it is down to authors to keep themselves as actively involved with events, book groups, talks, literary festivals and so on as they can.

A publisher will help out with this. I do contact the literary festivals and will try to get bookings for our authors. But as an individual author it’s likely you’ll do much better by contacting directly – if the publisher phones event organisers and festivals they will get bookings for the authors on the list who catch the eye of the bookings manager and that might not be you.

At Ward Wood we do hold very regular events both for our authors and for authors from other publishers for mutual support, and this does help out as it can be difficult and expensive for authors to get bookings and venues in London. The promotion around an event also helps an author’s name get known. I heard this week that one of the main independent presses (with books in many bookshops) gets 90% of all sales at events, so this shows how important they are.

Even if sales are low at events – and bookselling is hard anywhere – getting articles about each event into local newspapers and on listings sites does get your name seen regularly so that people know that you and your book exist.

I’ve concentrated on fiction in this piece because poetry has its own particular difficulties but as it has always been hard to sell there are also ways to help your book along. I’ll write about poetry soon in another post. However, many of these points are equally true of poetry.

One main difference is that poetry mainly sells at events with few sales from other sources, and sales at events aren't high either, so the effort is much greater. For those with stage fright it is possible to get involved in other ways, perhaps organising events for others (which I like to do)or a very good blog could help.

The fact is that, no matter how great the promotional effort from a poetry press, the sales figures will be in the low hundreds and about 90% of all books sold will be at events. There's no strong reason to move from one poetry press to another as you will be responsible for this 90% of sales no matter which publisher you choose. However, if you have other reasons for leaving a poetry press then it's a good idea to be with one known for good promotion because your name will be more widely seen. It's not just about sales, but also about building a reputation.

The brief answer to people who approach me saying their publisher has only sold 100 copies of their book, hasn’t got it into bookshops and doesn’t arrange events for them, is simple. As this usually comes with an approach to me as a potential publisher the fact is that the sales figure worries me, and not because the other publisher might be to blame.

I would be worried that the author hasn’t found ways to approach bookshops, to organise events, to create a popular blog, to build a Facebook following, to answer posts on high traffic websites (they let you link your name back to your own website which really helps), to do every single thing that helps a novel make that leap from being in the lower hundreds to 500 or more.

And maybe with enough effort a novel could make that magic leap and really take off. But not if the author is saying ‘Why isn’t somebody doing this for me?’ I work extremely hard to promote our authors and to rep their books to shops and organise events. I expect authors to work just as hard at it because it’s a collaboration.

Some authors are lucky and a debut novel is the one a major publishing company puts a massive promotional effort into and it takes off. Everything is done for the novelist. But for most of us getting up above the lower hundreds in sales takes a phenomenal effort and getting published is only the first hurdle. Getting the book to sell is the hardest part – harder even than writing the book, which we all know is extremely difficult.

I’ve been impressed by the mid-list authors from major publishers who have approached me when moving down to an independent seeing as their sales figures don’t reach the high targets expected. They have a real focus on approaching bookshops and giving events, and getting into the press and media.

I know it sounds like hard work and impossible, but writing a book feels like that too, and so does attracting a publisher. We can try to increase our sales figures with the same determination we put into the other tasks needed to be an author.

Why An Advance Can Ruin An Author

2011-09-19T03:22:00.000-07:00

I know a few literary agents but I had never heard what one told me recently: that an advance can ruin an author and make it hard for them to keep getting published. The irony is that agents need to go for an advance and a good financial deal because their income is a percentage drawn from the author’s earnings. The way to have your novel considered by a major publisher is by getting an agent to take you on, so there’s no way to avoid the problems an advance can cause.

There are a few major publishers who will consider novels without an agent (Macmillan New Writers and Canongate are two, and Snowbooks is another though not so well known). It’s worth looking at the Macmillan New Writers and Snowbooks websites for advice on how to submit. But the usual route to a major publisher is by finding an agent, and novelists often dream of that high advance as their first step into success as an author.

So how could an advance ruin an author? The literary agent explained that an advance is exactly what its name implies – an advance on your earnings. You don’t get paid any more until your book sales earn more than the figure of your advance – and for many authors this doesn’t happen. If your book sales bring in less than you’ve been paid as an advance, not only is the publisher unlikely to offer future contracts, but also other major publishers will judge you by this track record.

Advances of around £25,000 still represent a reasonable amount to expect, but how easy is it for a debut novelist to surpass that in actual sales? Some novels take off and do earn far more than the advance but, from what I hear, even with major publishers sales of under 1,000 copies for a debut novel would be typical.

Major publishers don’t usually offer royalties based on 10% of cover price, but even if they did you can see how many books would have to sell to pay back the £25,000 advance. If you keep it simple and think of £10 as the price of a novel it would be £1 per book in royalties so at least 25,000 books.

That’s a difficult sales figure to achieve with your debut novel – it might be hard with your follow-up novels in a 2, 3 or 4-book deal. The pressure you feel while writing these novels isn’t the best inspiration to an author.

If you take into account the way major publishers calculate your royalty payment it becomes even more difficult. It’s not 10% of cover price, it really is 10% of the actual profit after expenses have been taken off. Seeing as they discount books dramatically to get them into special deals in the bookshops, the earnings per book for the author can be minimal.

For a book to sell more than 25,000 copies it needs to take off and have people going into bookshops or looking online for it rather than the many others on offer. The author’s name needs to have become well known somehow, and no matter how hard we try as authors to give events and get media coverage, it really needs national newspaper, radio and TV to get a name that well established in the minds of readers. People need to be wanting it rather than the latest novels from all the famous names who are being named regularly in the national media.

Major publishers do have publicity departments, but if you speak to them they will tell you they work on a newly launched book but are then asked to focus on the ones that really show signs of taking off. At that point it’s up to the author and you’ll find yourself trying to get into bookshops, trying to arrange events, and trying to build a following so that your contract will be renewed.

The good news is that publishers don’t ask for the advance back if book sales don’t arrive at the same figure. I wonder if they will one day? So it’s still worth going for it, getting the agent, aiming for a major publisher, taking the advance and seeing what happens. You will still need to work hard to help the book take off and it may be down to you more than you realise.

A good few midlist authors from major publishers move to independent publishers if they can’t achieve the huge sales figures the major publishers want, and this is becoming more frequent. Take a look at the author with Sandstone who made it on to the Booker list – she moved down from a well known publisher.

When I spoke to Jim Powell, whose novel The Breaking of Eggs earned him a £150,000 advance, he said he was amazed how little the publisher did in terms of arranging events for him (he said he offered to give events but they didn’t arrange any – authors don’t realise how much they are expected to do on their own) and also to promote and get the book into newspapers (a friend sent it to the Times Literary Supplement reviewer and that was the only review it got before it suddenly took off).

This is typical, but the publisher did send the book off for prizes and Powell was named on TV as one of the most promising novelists of the year. Publishers do generally try for prizes, although they can’t send all their novels and usually don’t tell the authors if they’ve been submitted unless they get on to the longlist.

Another author with a major publisher has told me a similar story – that she was responsible for trying to get her books into bookshops and for building a following and sales. But I’ll write more on these subjects in future blogs.

The literary agent told me another thing about advances. She said publishers were aiming to poach established and successful authors from other major publishers by offering large advances rather than taking a risk on debut authors. They also poach from independent presses where authors have learnt about the phenomenal effort they need to make to work with their publisher in order to build a following, to achieve sales and to get into bookshops.

It may all sound off-putting to writers as we all want to sit calmly at home and write. But this is the state of publishing and bookselling in a culture where fewer and fewer people are buying books, and where so much reading is enjoyed online. People like a good event with readings to entertain them but they don’t want to buy any more reading material.

So much is on offer for free and authors are under increasing pressure to help publishing outlets and bookshops stay open. if we don’t we really will just be writing at home alone and in peace with publishing outlets and bookshops closing. The authors who do make this effort and succeed at it are the ones who will be poached with tempting advances once they establish themselves.

Poetry Society: To Vote Or Not To Vote?

2011-07-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

The situation at the Poetry Society has been baffling for many members due to too much information and too few facts being circulated. Like many people this started to put me off the idea of participating but I’ve realised this weekend how important it is to vote. Unless changes are made the Poetry Society risks losing the wonderful raise in Arts Council funding members were so pleased to hear had been awarded. It’s also clear that change is needed for reasons that go beyond the funding question.

This raise was secured by the Director Judith Palmer, who has since resigned, followed by other key people. Not surprisingly people want to know why, and petitioners have requested and been granted an EGM next Friday when they can ask questions and vote. If you can’t attend you can arrange a proxy.

I’m going to try to avoid what I feel has been the problem in the way this campaign has developed. We need to cut down to the simple facts that are known and provide a message to let people know what they’re voting for either on their own or by proxy.

Forget all the arguments, individual names, guesswork and gossip. This whole issue is about mismanagement and there are legal reasons why those in the know can’t give us the full facts. No doubt they will emerge. I asked to be given more facts before being able to decide how to vote or whether or not to appoint a proxy, but the unacceptable secrecy surrounding what has happened is actually enough of a fact to let me know what to do. Nobody can speak, because even if they leak facts they could be identified.

It’s as simple as this: the way forward is for the Board either to step down and let a temporary Board take over so as to restore trust in the members and ensure the Arts Council funding isn’t removed, or the current Board needs to change the way it works. This change would need to include openness about what has happened. This is what we’re voting for. If you can’t get to the meeting on Friday, then you can appoint a proxy.

The enforced secrecy even makes me unsure about what I can say here in case I cause legal problems for myself or anybody else, and that can’t be right. I had been put off the whole campaign by the diversions into personal criticisms of individuals and I think that has to stop. It can also feel to many members that the campaigners are people ‘in the know’, a clique discussing this with inside knowledge. All of this is offputting to the many members we need to reach out to and include. The Poetry Society is sending out clear, calm professional messages and the campaigners also need to stick to the clear message of what we’re voting for and why.

It’s quite telling that many people are asking the organisers of their own poetry groups what’s going on and what they’re supposed to be voting for. I wasn’t even sure earlier in the week. Those ‘in the know’ don’t realise that for many members the message really hasn’t got across, obscured by all the other discussions, rants and ramblings. Places like the Troubador are sending out emails to let poets know this vote is about mismanagement and not all the other imagined issues.

So I suggest setting all the gossip, rambling and criticisms of individuals aside, and I hope the campaigners will stick to a clear message. We need a new Board, or we need the Board to work in a different way. We need transparency and to be told what happened. I’m not sure if some of the people who resigned could be reinstated once we hear what happened, and there’s a feeling some of them should. That’s it.

To be a part of this you can email Kate Clanchy on kateclanchy@gmail.com for more information and ways to attend on Friday. You need to be a Poetry Society member. Alternatively you can arrange a proxy and need to do that by Tuesday. There’s also a blog set up with more details on http://thepoetrysocietyuk.wordpress.com/

Poetry Raises £4,000 for the Homeless in North London

2011-01-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

Despite the past year being a tricky one for many people financially, the Camden and Lumen Poetry project has raised even more for the homeless than the year before. This is a lovely surprise and a great help to the two Cold Weather Shelters supported. Here's proof that poetry can, among other things, serve a practical purpose.

I help out every month on the wine table and organise the website on http://www.camdenlumen.wordpress.com - and Ward Wood Publishing is also helping with the fundraising Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition which you can see on http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk First prize, judged by Carol Ann Duffy, is publication of a 20-page pamphlet of poetry and 50 free copies.

But the force behind the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series is poet Ruth O'Callaghan, so here are a few New Year words from her:

"2010 proved a challenging year but we still managed to raise nearly £4000 (with gift-aid) for the two Cold Weather Shelters we fund, and one of the ministers has already written to say that without the money they would be unable to continue. SO a MEGA THANKS TO YOU for your continued support. Also a very big thank you to Chris, Lynne and Adele who consistently do the bar and door. If anyone would like to volunteer to do the rare evening as ‘holiday relief’ it would be much welcomed.

Also welcome are any suggestions you might have with regard to the evenings. They are your evenings giving you the opportunity to read in front of established publishers (and wonderful, surprising things have happened) and internationally well known poets, as well as being published alongside them in an anthology. Last Christmas, when asked for suggestions, many requested that the poets from the floor had their own evenings enabling them to have a five minute – or longer – spot to offer a wider range of their work. This we did but the evenings were poorly attended so we presume that, in general, you prefer publishers and ‘name’ poets – correct me if I’m mistaken. Meanwhile, there will always be floor spots and the opportunity for longer spots but within the publishers/named poets evenings.

And we do have good relationships with publishers – congratulations to those who have done the mentoring/workshops and have subsequently have been published, and to those who will be in the 2011 Poets-from-the-Floor anthology due out in May.

We have a fabulous line up of poets for 2011 including Anne Stevenson and, fresh from the brilliant Aldeburgh Festival, Matthew Caley, Bernard Kops and Imtiaz Dharker – her Mumbai lunch box is a must. And that is just in the first few months. The second half of the year is equally exciting and there will of course be publishers’ evenings so please make the most of the opportunities offered.

In fact, the first event of 2011 – 7th January at Camden – is that dynamic new publishing house Ward Wood presenting poets Mike Horwood and Ann Alexander. Come along, meet the publishers, find out what they are about.

We are growing. We now have a competition with the winner having a pamphlet published, the glassses of wine are a tad larger and the raffle – OH, the dear old raffle – prize is increasing from £25 to over £30 worth of goodies. The free raffle evenings were much appreciated so perhaps we should have spontaneous i.e. unannounced, ones during the year. Again, if anyone has any other suggestions please let me know."
- Ruth O'Callaghan

Would You Know Your Own Child?

2010-12-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

Imagine my surprise when I realised the hard-to-believe premise of Deceptions, by Rebecca Frayn, is based on a true story. If your son disappeared at the age of 12 and returned a few years later, would you be able to recognise him with certainty? Would you know if the returning prodigal was an impostor, and if so would you pretend not to notice?

It really doesn’t matter whether this is credible or not, or that we can ruin part of the plot by reading about the story that inspired Deceptions in the back of the book. The character who fascinates the reader isn’t Dan, the 12-year-old who vanishes without a trace, or his widowed mother Annie, whose obsessive search is completely understandable. Our attention is all on Julian, the man who had moved in with Annie and had just asked her to marry him when Dan set off on his bike to school one morning and didn’t come home again.

Frayn has taken a real risk with Julian, and so has the publisher. Not so long ago aspiring novelists were told main characters had to be likeable, and Julian certainly isn’t able to get our sympathy at any level. Annie wants to be totally politically correct, with her left-wing views, her relaxed attitude to parenting, and her determination to live in a poor area and send her children to the local failing comprehensive.

Julian is an art specialist and valuer, pulling on his hygienic white gloves to study and evaluate fakes and masterpieces in the art world. The comprehensive school is disturbing to him, with the sound of lower class accents and children of diverse nationalities. There’s an undertone of racism and snobbery running through his first person narrative.

We don’t feel we can believe what he says because he’s so unsympathetic to us. As his dislike of Dan becomes more apparent, together with his resentment of Annie’s continuing love for her son, we do wonder if he knows more about this disappearance than he’s telling us. Annie’s daughter is quite different, seen as delightful and intelligent by him, and he likes to take her for long walks. We don’t quite trust him alone with her either.

The character of Julian is so well drawn that we can’t tell if he’s the good man he makes himself out to be, devoted to Annie and her daughter and just repressed and lacking in social skills, or if his dislike of Dan’s lack of intelligence and poor grammar is part of a dangerously abusive hidden side. Even Dan had started to be embarrassed by his mother’s Guardian on the table and had stopped bringing friends home, so it’s up to the reader to decide exactly what’s going on and who to like, if anyone.

Before Dan’s disappearance, Annie and Julian liked to joke about their different personalities, enjoying the roles of ‘right-on parent’ and ‘old fogey’. After Dan goes, their personalities force them apart, as Annie sees her engagement to Julian as the reason he ran away – if he ran away. From his lonely new bachelor flat at a distance, Julian sees the shabby residential area as a kind of utopia he wants to return to.

It’s a pity the book blurb informs us that Dan is going to turn up again as this could work well as a surprise. But is it really Dan? Can we trust Julian who has lost all respect in the art world by calling a genuine painting a fake and losing a client a small fortune? Would he not want Dan to return and convince himself any pretender to his place with Annie was an impostor? He certainly kept hoping she would forget Dan, and this insistence ruined their relationship. Or would Annie be the one to delude herself?

There are all sorts of questions in this book that keep us reading on, not least the difficult problem of how we can fit a new relationship into an established one parent home.

Poem For My Father

2010-12-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

This morning my brother called to say my father had died in his sleep during the night. It was exactly how he would have wanted it, after a day helping the neighbours to keep their radiators working well. He was the oldest of the neighbours but he never stopped with his DIY and wanting to spend time with others.

When my mother died five years ago he moved up to a place near Edinburgh in Scotland to live next door to his closest friend. So I know he was happy, in company, and was active and enjoying himself right up to the last day. His unusual silence this morning meant he was missed immediately and he was found in his bed as if he had slept without knowing a thing about his passing.

Here's a poem I wrote for him a few years ago, and my thoughts also go out to everybody who has lost a father this year or other years, especially at this time.

MY FATHER’S LANGUAGE

Each night my father –
a one-time sparks
on Greek merchant ships –
sent us off with
Da-dit-dit-dit, dit, da-dit-dit,
or Adi ypnos
which even the dog understood.

When arguments loomed
he de-stressed, a teenager again
on stage at Drury Lane
in bell-boy uniform,
ukulele in hand,
Leaning on a Lampost
or Mr Woo.

He parted his hair in the middle,
crossed his eyes
and found jokes to punctuate
attempts at conversation –
like The only head bigger than mine
is Birkenhead, and Why
do giraffes have such long necks?

But when he spoke of his past
he only said it once.
How, in storms at sea,
he cupped his soup-bowl in one palm,
then swayed it like a hammock
so the spoon never lost a drop –

that the eeriest place on earth
is a hurricane, the silent eye,
where the sea surface is oil smooth
and the only way to safety
is to leave this haven,
hold on tight,
confront the battle raging
through its troubled tail.

Notes:

Sparks - radio operator
Da-dit-dit-dit, dit, da-dit-dit - morse code for B-E-D
Adi ypnos - My father’s Greek for go to sleep

A Pageturning Novel About Alzheimers?

2010-12-11T05:49:00.000-08:00

Pageturner, alzheimers and novel aren’t three words you’d normally expect to see in the same sentence, and yet they go together to describe Still Alice, the debut from Simon & Schuster by Lisa Genova. When I saw the blurb I was a bit reluctant to start reading, thinking the subject would be depressing and stressful. How wrong I was.

Still Alice is a remarkable novel that will change the way you view alzheimers and the way you respond to people with this condition. It will change the way you think about alzheimers if you are ever diagnosed with it, and will certainly influence the way you relate to people close to you if they become affected. If you are already living with alzheimers, as a patient or as a friend, relative or professional, Still Alice is a novel you should take a look at.

Genova puts us right inside the experience of alzheimers by telling this story through the first person narrative of Alice, a university professor who is just 50 when she gets her diagnosis. She knows exactly what this will mean because, like Genova, she is a neuroscience specialist. The novel opens with Alice at her most capable intellectually – known in academic circles for her amazing ability to remember the detailed facts of her subject, including where precisely to find the quotes to reference research papers.

Alice relaxes by jogging round her town, knowing the map of the area and loving her independence. Admired by her colleagues and loved by her husband and daughters, she’s the type of career woman and successful family organiser many would aspire to emulate. Like us, she puts the first signs of memory loss down to trying to do too many things at once, but the diagnosis comes quite early in the novel. After that, due to her professional expertise, she knows how to recognise and chart her own progress into alzheimers and how she feels she should prepare for what is to come.

This knowledge also lets her find strategies to cope with each stage and to plan for what she wants to do when it goes too far. She knows she won’t be able to remember how or why she will want to end it all at a certain stage, so she leaves instructions for herself that she hopes she will follow regardless. Her Blackberry soon becomes her way of giving herself a To Do list to follow, as memory fails, and it has one important instruction of how to find the means of suicide on the day she can’t remember the answer to a few simple questions.

Once she no longer remembers simple information about her family she feels it will be time to use some items she has prepared to kill herself. Many of us would feel we would want to do the same. But as the story progresses, as we really feel what it is like to be Alice, will we still want her to commit suicide at that key moment or will we see alzheimers in a different way? Will Alice manage to go through with her initial plan right to the end?

I won’t spoil Still Alice by giving you the answers to this. All I can say is that suicide won’t be a plan I’ll be making if I ever get this diagnosis, and I’ll remember Alice if ever those close to me are affected by alzheimers. I will never see this condition in the same way again, and that’s a remarkable achievement by a novelist writing about such an important subject. On a purely stylistic level, Genova never swerves from her course of only seeing this through Alice’s eyes, and once we start this experience with her we can’t stop reading until we see it through.

Winner of the Support-A-Bookshop Prize

2010-11-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

The winner of the Support-A-Bookshop prize is Wayne Rattle. One of the Ward Wood books will be on its way to Wayne once he selects from our first authors or one of our New Year launches.

Thanks for supporting bookshops by ordering over the counter. High street bookshops have been surprisingly easy to approach and have helped Ward Wood Publishing get started by stocking our books. They also provide some of the best venues for launches and book clubs.

I know many of you can't order through a local bookshop, particularly from overseas, so I'll be announcing another prize soon for those who order online.

Support a Bookshop and Win a Book

2010-10-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

Ann Alexander’s poetry collection Too Close arrived from the printer today, so it joins Sue Guiney’s novel A Clash of Innocents as the second book from Ward Wood Publishing. With Mike Horwood’s poetry collection Midas Touch due out in a few weeks we’ll have a small but select set of books on offer by Christmas. So, it seems like time for a competition to support local bookshops and give readers a chance of winning one of these books.

If you buy from a local bookshop rather than buying online then send me a message by posting a comment here or by Facebook message. You can also contact me via the wardwoodpublishing.co.uk website. I’ve found local bookshops supportive and you can already buy our books off the shelves in some branches of Waterstones, Daunt Books and from the independent bookshop Sandoes. I know there are copies in stock in the Hampstead Waterstones, and also Daunt Books Marylebone Road.

These might not be close to you, so the best way to support a local bookshop is to go in and order books through them. This helps the bookshop, helps the publisher and author (as online booksellers often ask for a large discount and are sometimes unreliable – especially the main one!) and it helps buyers as there’s no extortionate postage. You also have the pleasure of going into a real bookshop for a browse and to enjoy the look, smell and feel of books!

If you order one of our books through a bookshop then let me know and you can choose one of the other two books to get your name in a prize draw. Let me know which bookshop you ordered from, and also let me know where you see our books on the shelves so we can name and promote local bookshops. If you already bought one of our books from a bookshop you can also tell me that for a chance to go into the draw.

I know this competition might not be possible for everybody – although it would be interesting to try ordering the book through bookshops in other countries. We’re certainly supplying a bookshop in Cambodia so I know it can be done. Not to worry if you can’t do it – I’ll have a different competition for another book next week.

Support a Bookshop on National Poetry Day

2010-10-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

I'm stuck at home with a cold and cough this year and can only remember how much I enjoyed National Poetry Day in the Southbank Centre last time. My thoughts have drifted to how I can enjoy National Poetry Day at home and also champion poetry.

Here's what I've come up with. Let's go and order the next poetry collection we want from our local bookshop. This not only costs less than paying the exorbitant postage charged by Amazon, it also gets poetry into the bookshops.

I've had a heartening response from bookshops recently, and notice that they often order a few copies of a book rather than just one. This doesn't only support the bookshop, it also results in a higher percentage going to the publisher and consequently also supports the authors. Online booksellers can ask for a discount of up to 60%, which is incredibly hard on publishers and their authors.

Added to that it's a real pleasure going into bookshops. If you want to join me today by going into a bookshop and ordering poetry then I'd love to hear feedback on how it was for you.... Did it feel good? Does your bookshop have a cafe, readings and events? Maybe a book club? I think it's time we got back to the bookshops, those of us who have got used to shopping online.

I have nothing against online booksellers. In fact I often complained about bookshops not stocking poetry and was delighted when Amazon and others appeared to make it easier to get the books I wanted. The internet also lets us order direct from publishers, or find the authors on Facebook to see if they'll send us a signed copy.

A casualty has been the high street bookshop and I find I have a sudden longing to do my shopping there. I've been in touch with bookshops since the first Ward Wood book by Sue Guiney was launched, and this has reminded me of all those enjoyable times browsing among actual shelves rather than webpages.

Waterstones and Daunt Books also surprised me by being so willing to talk and order books, and there were even bookshop managers at Sue Guiney's event. Bookshops also welcome signings and other events and don't charge - publishers and authors just take the wine along! So they're extremely important at a time when it's hard to meet costs for publishers specialising in non-mainstream forms.

If you order poetry (or anything else) from a bookshop, please give some feedback on how it went. And perhaps some tempting descriptions of those bookshops too....

The Birth of a Publishing Company 6: Teamwork with Google Wave

2010-08-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

As our first book goes to press – the novel A Clash of Innocents by Sue Guiney – I can reveal that an experiment I have attempted with Google Wave has proved a definite success. Google Wave is collaborative software so I wondered if it could help Ward Wood work as a team, letting the authors take more of a role and helping us all to communicate regularly.

If you haven’t seen Google Wave and ‘collaborative software’ sounds tricky, then don’t be put off. It’s simple to register with Google Wave (I invite authors by email) and after that it’s as easy as using message boards or email for communication. The benefit of Google Wave is that you invite the people you need to communicate with on a specific subject, and all of the messages on that theme will be kept neatly together in that ‘Wave’.

For example, for Sue’s novel I invited her and my colleague Mike Fortune-Wood into a Wave. This Wave is now a string of messages containing everything we need to work on her novel. We’ve passed the Word file to each other throughout the editing stages, and all the versions of the file are there in the Wave so it’s easy to see how it progressed and which is the latest version.

We also passed photographs of the authors and ideas for the cover design. ‘All very easy to do by email’ you might say, but it’s such a nuisance hunting through emails for a bit of information you know you’ve received. Scrolling back up through a Wave of messages is much easier. As Sue, Mike or I had extra ideas we could post them on the Wave, and even if they weren’t ideas that could be acted on for weeks they were still there for later action.

Using Google Wave definitely made my work much easier. As I was editing and needing answers to questions I could put them in the Wave then carry on working. By the time I looked at the Wave again, Sue had usually answered, and if I needed to go out of the office for a few hours I could do that knowing that I could come back and find some responses on the Wave. It did make the editing process more efficient, and I’ve edited a good number of books in the past so I know how different this feels.

Apart from all of this it also keeps authors and publishers more in touch than they have been traditionally. I’ve worked as both editor and author, and I know how frustrating it can be for authors to wonder if a long silence means we’re being neglected, or if it means the publisher is busy on our book. With Google Wave the author could stay well informed and see how the book was progressing throughout the various stages.

At the same time it felt as if we were staying in touch and was more friendly than working on files exchanged by email. Other Waves were set up with information for everybody, so our first three authors were invited to participate in those discussions. One of our authors is in Finland, one is in London, and one is in Penzance, so a way of letting them ‘meet’ and share ideas on book launches and other subjects should help create a sense of getting to know each other.

We often say that writing is a solitary business, and so is editing. With Google Wave this has felt quite different, and once we were working on the cover, book design and production with Mike Fortune-Wood it did feel as close as it could to working in the same office. His final files could be posted in the Wave and viewed using Google Documents.

There are many more features to Google Wave that I haven’t had time to try out yet, but it certainly streamlines the types of communication I need in order to work well. Apart from the message-board look keeping all information on each subject neatly together and the ability to add various files, including text and pictures, it also lets you edit or delete each post in the waves to keep them concise and tidy. It’s also possible to start discussing with the others live if they come online at the same time.

Anyone who works in publishing will know that it’s not just about editing, book design and production. At the same time as all that we need to be thinking about author reading tours, book launches, arranging distribution, and communicating with the press and media. Each of these elements has to be dealt with at exactly the right time so that everything happens at the relevant moment.

Google Wave has a scheduler to help me see what I need to do in order of priority, and it has really been a help feeling that I can unload that from inside my head to let the ‘Google brain’ worry about remembering it all! Submissions waiting to be read are also stored in their own Waves and scheduled for their turn in this priority list. If this all makes me sound extremely organised, then you haven’t seen the usual disorder in my office! Many of us in publishing store much of our ‘to do’ list in our heads and it can get incredibly busy in there. With Google Wave I find I can switch off when I stop working, knowing that nothing will be forgotten.

On top of all this it’s nice to know that even in cases of computer crashes, and wherever we need to travel in the world, we can find all the files and info we need in our virtual office on anybody’s computer. This is how it feels to me on the publishing side and I’d be interested to hear from the authors if it helps them feel better informed and more involved as we go through the process with each of their books.

Carol Ann Duffy Judges International Poetry Pamphlet Competition in Aid of the Homeless

2010-08-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

There’s a chance to have your poetry published in a 20-page pamphlet while also supporting the homeless, with the added benefit of being selected by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. The Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition is unusual as the entry fee per poem is just £2.50 to make it possible for everybody to have a try. The winner will also be selected on the basis of just one prizewinning poem (maximum length 40 lines), so you don’t have to submit the whole pamphlet for a chance of being published. If you want to submit more poems there are discounts, with 6 poems costing just £10.

This is the first year for the Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition and it’s the initiative of poet Ruth O’Callaghan, founder and organiser of the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series. This popular project supports the homeless in the Cold Weather Shelters in the Camden and Kings Cross areas of London, and all income from the competition will go to support the same cause. None of the people involved in organising the competition will take any income from it, so it’s set to give a real boost to the amount donated by the project every year.

Poetry is really making a practical difference in helping the homeless thanks to Ruth’s tireless efforts and wonderful new initiatives. The Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition will not just benefit the people in the Cold Weather Shelters, but it will also help a poet to get their pamphlet into print. With entries invited from all over the world there will be poets of all standards joining in to help raise money for charity while competing for the prestigious prize of being selected by Carol Ann Duffy, patron of the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series.

The winner will receive 50 copies of their pamphlet to keep, sell, or give to friends. They will also be invited to read at the regular Lumen and Camden venues, if they can make it and would like to, and their pamphlets will also be offered for sale online and at the twice-monthly events. All money raised from pamphlet sales by the publishers and by the Camden and Lumen project will go to the Cold Weather Shelters.

The closing date is early next year on February 14th, but it’s never too soon to enter. Entry fees received from now on will go towards helping the Cold Weather shelters as winter approaches. The pamphlet will be published by Ward Wood Publishing, and full details on how to enter are on the website http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk

You can enter by post by sending your poems and a cheque to Ruth O’Callaghan, or you can send the poems by post and pay by Paypal if you prefer. For international and other entries it’s possible to enter by using Paypal and then either posting the poems or sending them in an email. Regulars at events can hand their entry to Ruth, who will pass them on to Carol Ann Duffy. Full details are on the Ward Wood website.

Do join in and also post details about this competition on your own blogs and websites as the competition is likely to raise a substantial amount to help the homeless while also giving a poet a highly desirable prize.

Are 15-Year-Old Girls Children?

2010-07-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

This is the question at the heart of Stephen May’s TAG, the novel that was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year before going on to win the Media Wales Readers’ Prize as the one most readers thought should have won. How should teacher Jonathan Diamond see his difficult pupil Mistyann, and how should he behave towards her? Politically correct answers become more difficult when he has to travel alone with her to an isolated manor house in North Wales for a special course aimed at helping Talented and Gifted children.

From the start May lets us know things are going to go wrong: we’re just waiting to see how badly he could fall, or if it might all be a comedy of errors. We know Diamond has ended up in disgrace, so we’re with him at every moment hoping that he won’t do anything too drastic, and for a middle-aged man alone with a precocious teenager that’s nerve-wracking. At forty-one, and almost good-looking with some sort of resemblance to Tom Cruise, he’s obviously not of the right generation to be a friend to Mistyann. But he’s a recovering alcoholic who could be stressed into taking a drink and he was also gifted in his youth, a musician who underachieved, so his empathy is with her rather than with the other staff. He’s noncomformist enough to identify more with Mistyann than the system and the rules of behaviour that could protect them both.

The characters are drawn so vividly that readers will remember them as real people they watched through this darkly comic drama. It’s not surprising to find that May is also a playwright, and he has obviously studied teenagers to create Mistyann and the others on the Talented and Gifted residential course. The chapters are written in first person narrative alternately by Diamond and Mistyann, and it’s quite an achievement how May can make us believe it’s a 15-year-old girl talking. She’s no Lolita, as teenagers in this millennium happily call out ‘perv’ or ‘paedo’ at the first sign of any suspect behaviour, and in this book they often do.

While Diamond bungles step-by-step towards the court scene we hear about in the early chapters, we meet more characters drawn with the playwright’s penetrating vision of human behaviour. The American ed-psych guru Ariel La Rock is almost too easy a target, and the couple running manor are beautifully brought to life – the feeble and boyscoutish Ray who has brought back a feisty Asian wife called Susie from extensive travels where he was ‘finding himself’.

It’s not easy to write well about teenagers, and the other students invited on the course are as believable as Mistyann. Clearly chosen for politically correct criteria rather than for purely academic reasons, they include the selection of races and the boy in the wheelchair that might mark them out as the ‘right sort of characters’ for an all-inclusive children’s book these days. As they get to know each other teenage sex is soon on the agenda and, again, May manages to write these scenes incredibly well. Being explicit while still avoiding the pitfalls is a challenge and it takes a brave writer to confront it.

Bringing teenage sex in also raises more discussions, such as why we should consider Mistyann a child but still feel it’s right and normal for the kids to have relationships between themselves. The lovelessness of these relationships is also moving and made me step away from the book to think about our society – and I love it when a book makes me take time aside to meditate on the themes. Another question is about why it feels so troubling that Diamond is at risk of overstepping the boundaries with Mistyann, while somehow it’s just comical if a young female teacher gets involved with a teenage boy.

There’s so much more in TAG: the family Mistyann comes from with the serial relationships of her mother and the way responsibility for looking after the children and cooking has fallen to her. There’s a whole vision of the way we’re expecting teenagers to live today, not to mention the confusion of the adults. May never comments on any of this: he just brings it to life and different readers will draw different conclusions to me, but it will make all readers think.

Is a 15-year-old girl a child? Yes, she is, even though the explicit sex and the risk of pregnancy show she’s old enough to be a mother, and she’s also a better mother than her own one as we can see when she looks after her siblings. Are most men attracted to 15-year-old girls as a group of highly intelligent men in a book discussion group told me recently? Possibly. If so May is brave in revealing this when he does cross that line at times to show us what Diamond finds himself thinking, almost despite his conscious decisions. May pushes the boundaries of what’s acceptable in this novel, in a way that few novelists do when talking about underaged characters. But sometimes you have to push that boundary to raise the discussion of how we should look after these children. The portrayal of how good a teenage mother could be was also welcome.

The Birth of a Publishing Company 5: The Website Goes Live

2010-07-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

It’s a sign of the times that the day a website goes live feels like the day a venture really starts. It seemed particularly apt that my business partner Mike Fortune-Wood contacted me to say the Ward Wood Publishing website was about to appear online just as many of my American friends were celebrating the 4th of July. I’ve just finished the edit of American novelist Sue Guiney’s book A Clash of Innocents and we’ve been planning the launch, so it seemed like a good date to celebrate a British-American collaboration!

It really helps to get some financial support at the outset and we’re grateful to the London School of Journalism who have sponsored the costs of the website. I hope we’ll be able to work with them in more ways in future, and in the meantime take a look at our site on www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk but bear in mind that the payment options and some pages (anthologies and short stories for example) aren’t live yet.

So much work has gone on privately that it felt exciting to reveal some of it publicly via the website at last. Along with information about Sue Guiney on the Novels page, the Poetry pages are also live with information about Ann Alexander and her collection Too Close, complete with prizewinning poems including the Mslexia one. You can also find out about Mike Horwood, a poet you may not have heard about as he’s been living in Finland for years. His book Midas Touch will be out in November, and Ann’s collection is due for publication in October.

Some of the pages aren’t live yet, so don’t be frustrated by the inactive links. We’ve been busy planning book launches, bookshop signings and reading events with the authors and the Events pages will soon be filling up as we add the details. I’ll save information on the events we have lined up for future blog posts along with information on how to arrange reading tours and launches.

I’m especially pleased with the logo Mike Fortune-Wood has created: he suggested the design intertwining the twin initials from our surnames. I’d like a brooch made with that! The logo was the first idea we worked on for the website and it then took some time to come up with the right colours. With feedback from others we tried to find colours that were easy on the eye and clear to read, bearing in mind the difficulties people can have with some combinations due to colour blindness.

I’ll let the website speak for itself, and as more pages become live our aim is to make it a place where authors can interact by promoting events they arrange as well as the ones we’re planning for them. There will also be links to the authors’ own websites and blogs. The authors stay in regular contact with us at Ward Wood so all of this is working as a collaborative effort, and we’ve used Google Wave to make this possible. Google Wave has been a real asset in helping us to work as a team and to share information in a way that I’ll describe in the next article.

From Pain to Paint to Poetry: Pascale Petit

2010-06-18T02:29:00.000-07:00

I looked forward to Pascale Petit's launch of her new collection 'What the Water Gave Me' so much that I thought I may be disappointed, but in fact it was even more stunning than expected. There was standing room only in the unusual venue - a basement in the converted Horse Hospital near Russell Square.

Audience members were shoulder-to-shoulder, leaning close to hear each other in an excited buzz of conversation before and after the performance, but when Pascale read the silence was filled with the thrill her poems inspire. Each of the poems in this collection is inspired by a piece of art by Frida Kahlo, and Pascale describes this artist as having turned pain into paint.

Pascale has taken this one step further and turned pain into paint and then into poetry. The poems are in the voice of Kahlo, and some give voice to the paintings, while some are 'parallels' as Pascale called them. It's not a simple task writing a poem based on a painting as most poets have discovered at one time or another. And yet somehow Pascale has found a muse in Frida Kahlo and writes poems that come from one work of art to create another.

Kahlo's paintings have a visceral effect on those who are most taken by her work, and Pascale's poetry also inspires this response in a reader or listener. I've heard some people tell me they 'just don't get it', but if you do respond to Pascale's poetry it's electrifying. When I discovered Pascale's poetry through her collection 'The Zoo Father' I knew I had found a poet who could create a passionate response in me, as Roddy Lumsden has recently described the effect some writing can have on us.

The amazing thing about 'The Zoo Father' was that every poem had that effect. Sometimes a moment here or there in a poem can 'give us that whoosh' as Andrew Motion puts it. If a couple of poems in a collection can do that then I'm pleased to have read it. But with 'The Zoo Father' this happens in poem after poem. That kind of consistency isn't often achieved, and shows poetry that's on another level.

I did wonder if 'The Zoo Father' was so exceptional that it wouldn't be repeated, but 'What the Water Gave Me' proves that the consistency isn't just from poem to poem, but also from collection to collection. It was a special treat for the audience in The Horse Hospital to hear Pascale read some of these poems, accompanied with a visual display of the Kahlo paintings.

I do wonder sometimes if I should tone down my admiration for Pascale's work, but, having thought about it, I decided to write this blog to say how wonderful it is now to have women poets who can inspire us with this standard of writing. When I was starting out as an aspiring writer in my teens it was very different. There seemed to be so few women poets in anthologies, nobody as a role model because Plath had writing of a high quality but wasn't somebody I wanted to emulate. Plath was the only recent woman writer I saw in books, and even she wasn't alive by the time I was reading anthologies.

There were plenty of women poets in Victorian times and into the early part of the Twentieth Century, so it's not true when some people say there were 'few women poets pre 1960s or 70s'. For some reason we seem to have stifled them just at the time I was looking for women writers as inspiration, and I won't go into the reasons for it in this blog.

Perhaps Pascale Petit is the most inspirational for me, and perhaps for others it's one of the other excellent women poets we have at the moment, which isn't to say men can't or don't enjoy their work! But I don't think men might understand what it was like for some of us as teenagers to be writing poetry and sensing an absence of women in poetry.

Frida Kahlo has given inspiration to Pascale Petit, and in her turn Pascale passes that inspiration on to many more of us. We're so lucky now to have such an active circuit of poetry readings and open mics, which also wasn't the case when I was starting out. Pascale teaches poetry workshops in the Tate, and other well-known poets also give workshops. So we can meet these figures in a way that wasn't possible when I was younger, and I really recommend taking advantage of the opportunity.

A Chance to Read at Open Mic Alongside Three Major Women Poets

2010-06-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

On July 13th there’s a chance to read at open mic after three of our best-loved and strongest women poets: Elaine Feinstein, Mimi Khalvati and Fiona Sampson. The atmosphere in the room at our Lumen venue is sure to be electric, so try not to miss this one. With such a wonderful event it’s sure to bring together all the regulars plus plenty of newcomers, so the poetry will mix with a chance to socialise over wine and soft drinks with friends old and new.

If you’re new to the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series then the format is that booked poets are invited to read in the first and second half, with an interval for wine, soft drinks and chat in the middle. Poets from the floor are called up by our organiser, the poet Ruth O’Callaghan, so if you’d like to read then bring along one poem of up to 40 lines. When you come in you’ll be able to put your name on a list to be called, and if you leave a copy of the poem with your contact details it will be sent to the editor of next year’s anthology for consideration. All proceeds from entrance, drinks table, and book sales (the books have been generously donated by publishers) go to support the Cold Weather Shelters for the homeless.

What a wonderful line-up there is for this event from 6.30 – 9pm at Lumen, 88 Tavistock Place, within walking distance of Russell Square, St Pancras and Euston stations. Full details are on the Events page on http://www.camdenlumen.wordpress.com and you can also find the Camden and Lumen group on Facebook to be kept up-to-date on the twice-monthly events.

The Birth of a Publishing Company 4: The Authors

2010-06-12T03:59:00.000-07:00

The contracts have been sent out and arrived back signed this week so I can talk about the first three authors on the Ward Wood Publishing list. I'm thrilled by the thought of these books appearing in September, October and November this year as they're all so strong.

If you're reading my posts to find out how to start your own publishing company and want to know how to arrange a contract then you'll find the Society of Authors offers model contracts. We were lucky enough to be able to base a contract on the one Mike Fortune-Wood already uses for Cinnamon Press.

If you want some ideas about how authors are chosen then the selection of these authors should give some tips. While the company is getting established I did need to select authors who were previously published and had the kind of skills needed to help us promote. As time goes on this will help me to reach further out to discover and encourage new talent.

The first book due out in September is by the author Sue Guiney, an American who lives in London. Her novel is called A Clash of Innocents and is set in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It's narrated by a strong American woman who left the US thirty years before and is running an orphanage together with the Cambodian girl she has adopted. I won't ruin the plot, but this completely believable character gradually reveals why she left the US and why she's so distrustful of the volunteers who arrive and may damage the children she is determined to protect.

How did I select Sue? I had come across Sue online and noticed that she was always among the most active when Facebook and blogs were being used to resolve problems in publishing. With publishers closing down during the recession she was there taking part in trying to find ways for authors to move forward. She arranged the get-together for authors who had been left isolated by the demise of Bluechrome, and I also heard her read at the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series one day. She felt like a good person to approach with my ideas about a new company and her response made me realise it would be well received by authors. She also told me she had a new novel and asked if I'd read it. When she posted it to me I couldn't put it down - a sure sign that it was a good choice. It was also extremely well polished and ready for the editor's desk.

The second author I selected is Ann Alexander, who sent me her latest poetry collection called Too Close. Those of you reading this on the internet will be glad to know that Ann is also somebody who came into contact with me online, this time only via Facebook. I have no idea how we became Facebook 'friends' but I hardly knew Ann before the start of Ward Wood Publishing led to some talk between us and the submission of her manuscript.

Ann had also lost her publisher, Peterloo, who brought out two previous collections. I'm pleased we can help authors of this standard carry on in the knowledge each of their books has an outlet. It's so important to be able to keep writing without having to worry about finding a publisher each time, and that's why I want Ward Wood to publish fiction, nonfiction and plays as well as poetry. It gives authors a home for all of their work if they want that.

Poets who have won prizes and appeared in good magazines and broadcasts can tempt a publisher, although this isn't necessary if I see a good collection submitted. Ann has a more impressive track record than most editors could hope for. She took first prize in the Frogmore, Bedford Open, and Mslexia competitions, came 3rd in the BBC’s poem for Britain (2003) and 3rd in the Peterloo poetry competition.

Again it struck me immediately as a book I couldn't stop reading, each poem so direct and readable but with disturbing depths. It's about the everyday, based on Ann's life as an outsider who has settled in Penzance, but the troubles beneath will hit the nerves of her readers. Ann and Sue are two incredibly strong female voices who will appeal to men and women alike.

When I saw Ann's submission it was clear that time and effort had gone into perfecting the poems, choosing the right order, and making it all work as a collection. Like Sue's book, this one was more than ready for the editor's desk. If there's a hint I could give to writers who want to submit to publishers, it would be not to send your manuscript too soon. Others will be sending writing that shows how hard it has been worked on so it's vital to do the same.

Ann's book is scheduled for October, and in November we have a poetry collection coming out from Mike Horwood, a name less familiar to audiences at UK readings. This is because Mike has lived in Finland for years, and being away from the reading circuit can isolate a poet if we think of poetry as 'a small world where everybody knows each other' as I've often heard it called. In fact Mike is an excellent reader of his own work to audiences if people get the chance to catch him on one of his visits.

Mike has one previous poetry book out - a translation of the work of the Finnish poet Martti Hynynen which was published by Cinnamon Press and is called island, nameless rock. Ward Wood will be bringing out his debut collection called Midas Touch, and I'm familiar with many of these poems as his poetry drew my attention when I saw him workshopping it online. You'll have realised by now that the internet has played a large part in these first selections!

The unusual characteristic about Mike's poems is that they create an atmosphere rather than telling us about the author, or passing on a message or set of ideas. For this type of poetry to work, the atmosphere must really captivate us, and with Mike's poetry it does. The poems create a strange feeling of heightened perception, like a room or forest setting which the poet lets us see at those times when nobody is there.

What does a room feel like when nobody is around, or a clearing in woodland with only an animal in it, or nothing sentient at all? Mike puts us in that odd crystal-clear atmosphere: the narrator of these poems is there, but effaced. The effect can also be that any characters who do come into the poems seem to be separated by glass, as if true communication between people can never really be achieved.

Mike's collection was not just highly readable, but also presented in a way that will only need tweaks if tiny errors are spotted at the editing stages. The poems had each been worked on and then put into order in a way that made the whole selection chime together. Working on the correct order for a collection is one of the most enjoyable tasks for a poet, along with knowing the moment when one set of poems feels complete as a book so that we can close the cover on it and place the next poem in a new folder.

These are the first authors on our list and so much work has been going on in the background before I could name them publicly: reading a number of manuscripts, settling on these ones (which jumped out quickly as great choices), and dealing with the many other tasks a publisher needs to handle at the same time as doing the editorial work. More about those other tasks in future posts, but just one more comment is needed before I finish.

Some of you will be reading this and thinking that it seems difficult to be chosen by an editor in the face of such competition. You don't need to have previous publications or contest wins to be selected, but you do need a manuscript that works and that has been polished to the highest standard you can manage. You don't need to read at open mics, although that's one place you could be talent-spotted. You do need to be sharing your writing in some way that gets you noticed, and this can lead to you being invited to submit by editors even if their website says 'Closed to submissions for the present.'

There are also other submissions that come to an editor's desk that show potential. The authors may even have good books already published, or they may not. These potentially publishable books take longer for an editor to accept or decline. Perhaps the author has sent them too soon and it's possible they just need more work. Whatever the reason, either an editor will just decline them, as there's so much work to be done to edit, publish and promote the accepted books. Or the editor may feel like giving feedback and reading the books again once they have been worked on.

In either case it means that these books will be set aside and will be prioritised during gaps in the editor's work, so it's worth writing and rewriting to the highest standard you can. That's the best tip I can give, along with sending them off at some point and not making the mistake another friend of mine makes because she's too much of a perfectionist!

The Birth of a Publishing Company 3

2010-05-12T06:25:00.000-07:00

Today is the day we've been working towards with excitement and also much preparation. You always need to be ready for a birth, and this morning our new publishing company was born. After much discussion between the eager couple a name had been settled on in readiness for the big day and it's Ward Wood Publishing.

Of course the mother and father of this new publishing company aren't a real couple: we're business partners, so the important step we needed to make involved signing a partnership agreement. I was delighted to sign my name under that of Mike Fortune-Wood, who brings years of publishing experience to the new company.

I have long admired Mike's expertise with graphics and web design as well as the production side of publishing. He's also the business manager and particularly easy to work with. The book covers he designs are admired by many, me included. I'll be in charge of all things editorial and dealing with promotion, and we'll both be involved in book launches and events.

The company is new but Mike has experience with Cinnamon Press and I've spent my whole working life in writing and publishing, so we're far from new to the business. The signing of the partnership agreement should have been followed by a champagne celebration - a champagne breakfast at that time of day - but Mike was driving back to Wales and I didn't want to risk losing him straight away! So instead there was a good deal of chatting, laughing, and discussing ideas without alcohol in the London sunshine.

Those of you reading this to find out how to set up a publishing company will want to know how to arrange a partnership agreement and author contracts. We had author contracts which we could modify as we have both worked for publishing companies before, but you can get a model contract from the Society of Authors and tweak it for your own needs. There are partnership agreements available online but most are too complex and would need a lawyer to sort out any amendments. Mike purchased a more simple partnership agreement suitable to our needs.

Soon our website will go live and the first three authors are looking at their contracts as I write this. I'm pleased with the first books we'll be aiming to bring out this autumn and can only let you all guess how it makes me feel to have made this step today. It's the realisation of a long-held dream now that Ward Wood Publishing is born.

The Birth of a New Publishing Company 2

2010-05-11T05:56:00.000-07:00

I promised to keep you all informed about the stages in setting up a new publishing company, and although things may sound quiet we've been extremely busy behind the scenes. By later this week I'll be able to issue a press release to give details about the company, the co-owners, and some information about the first authors.

The reason it all seems quiet is that so much needs to be done privately to set up a publishing company before the public launch. We've put together a partnership agreement and also an author contract (more about how to do this in future posts in case you're thinking of starting a company yourselves). My business partner has been working hard at designing a logo and building the website offline.

All of this takes time and good collaboration, and I'm pleased to find we work really well together. My partner is in charge of the website, graphics, production and the business side of things. I'll be dealing with the editorial side and promotion, and we'll both be involved in book launches.

So what have I been doing all this time? The first thing I needed to do was approach authors as the first submissions have been by invitation only. The authors have been incredibly discreet, waiting for the public launch so they can tell others that their books have found a home.

I was delighted to find three exceptional books by three strong and original voices which will start our list. As you can imagine I've been reading manuscripts and working with the first authors selected to edit their books where necessary.

This means that when we sign our partnership agreement tomorrow we shall be ready to launch the company with authors already selected. I can't wait to give you all more details and it won't be long now.

In future posts I'll be talking about how I selected the authors, which should be helpful to writers seeking a publisher. Apart from pleasing the editor there are production factors to take into consideration, such as why some publishing houses ask for books of specific lengths.

So watch out for The Birth of a Publishing Company 3 (it's starting to sound like a movie)!

Shuttle and Sampson Support Homeless Charity Anthology

2010-05-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

I had two bits of welcome news to make up for the election chaos this week. One is that I have poems in the Seeking Refuge anthology and will be reading them at the launch this week. The other is that my old tutor Andrew Motion got married on Saturday, so all good wishes to him and his wife.

Andrew was a fabulous tutor and one of those rare life-changing people who cross our paths. He gave me belief in myself as a writer and helped me identify the strengths and weaknesses of my own style without trying to change how I wrote.

Penelope Shuttle and Fiona Sampson are two of the well-known poets supporting Seeking Refuge, the latest anthology from the Camden and Lumen Poetry project in aid of the homeless. Each year Ruth O’Callaghan organises regular open mics with all proceeds going to the Cold Weather Shelters, and readers can submit the poems they perform for inclusion in this prestigious anthology.

Jan Fortune-Wood selected the best poems from last year’s open mics and edited Seeking Refuge, which has been published by Cinnamon Press this year. The standard of the poems is high, and the collection also makes poetry accessible, so the anthology is a perfect gift as Jan indicates: ‘This is real poetry with a real purpose – accessible, entertaining, varied and able to make a difference. Seeking Refuge is both a great way to get into poetry and a fantastic way to support an essential charity housing London’s homeless.’

Seeking Refuge is already available from Inpress Books, and as all proceeds go to the Cold Weather Shelters it’s worth getting a copy and a few extra to give as gifts. The launch, on May 9th in the Lumen venue, is sure to be a vibrant and sociable event, with the selected poets reading their Seeking Refuge poem, and copies available for purchase.

Please share this information and review the book on your websites to raise as much as possible for the Cold Weather Shelters. This project supports two worthwhile causes – poetry with the open mics, and the homeless in the shelters. It’s also good fun to come along and read and you can submit poems to be considered for next year’s anthology. Every penny raised at events and with the anthology goes to the homeless.

You can find the Seeking Refuge anthology on Inpress Books here http://www.inpressbooks.com/seeking_refuge_jan_fortunewood_i020914.aspx and you can see more about it and also find how to take part in the open mics if you look at the Camden and Lumen website here http://www.camdenlumen.wordpress.com Hope to meet some of your there.

Monique Roffey: A White Woman, A Green Bicycle, and the Orange Prize

2010-04-27T04:57:00.000-07:00

It came as no surprise to me to hear Monique Roffey had been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for her novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle. As soon as I received it for review I knew I was in for a treat and I wasn’t disappointed. Roffey is surely one of the best women novelists around and this tale of Trinidad is as irresistible as her earlier work.

Her first novel, Sun Dog, tempted me to buy it after reading an excerpt. It’s not easy for a debut novelist to have this effect, but there was something about her fragile anti-hero as he discovered his body was changing with the seasons, sprouting buds between fingers and toes in Spring. I just had to read more and find out about this shy young man working in a delicatessen and rebelling against the commune upbringing he’d had with his hippy mother.

The White Woman on a Green Bicycle tempts the reader just as Sun Dog did. The lush landscape of Trinidad makes us feel we’re right there, or want to be there. In fact the green hills of Trinidad come so vividly to life that they actually speak to the characters and seduce them or inspire their envy.

It might be hard to imagine why one of the main characters, Sabine, doesn’t want to live there and craves the London suburban home her husband promised her if she would spend a bit of time in Trinidad while he establishes himself in his job. But, from the first days, Sabine is sensitive to the feeling that Trinidad doesn’t want her, doesn’t want the white people still living like the colonialists of the past. She’s both attracted to Trinidad and its people, and also pushed out due to her compassion and awareness. She agrees with the Trinidadians but she isn’t one of them so can’t rebel alongside them.

Her husband George is different. Like the other men sent there by businesses he can be important in Trinidad, can have a decent job, buy land and build his big house, and move on from the strong love he feels for his wife at the start through a series of affairs as the decades become more permissive. Gradually Sabine realises he will never keep his promise to take her home – this is his home. Her children are Creole and love the island, and she’s the only disappointed one: the one who doesn’t ever feel she fits in.

Roffey’s expertise is in telling this story from the point of view of both characters, Sabine and George, and keeping the reader’s empathy for both of them. In fact, we can tell that their love for each other has somehow survived. At the start of the book they’re both old and resigned to what their life has been, having given up on what they had hoped for, so I’ve given away none of the plot.

Instead of making the reader wait to see what happens we start at the end of their lives and the book lets us see back into various details. The first half of the novel is from George’s perspective, as an old man, wanting somehow to redeem himself in his wife’s eyes. The second half is told by the young Sabine from the time of her arrival on the island through the first decades of their marriage.

I particularly enjoy a book that tells me about the history of a country that I hadn’t known about, and Roffey does this in a masterful way. Not long after Sabine and George arrive the Trinidadians are roused to support the charismatic leader Eric Williams who promises to free them from the remnants of colonialism. Sabine is metaphorically seduced by him, empathising with the people, and is emotionally and physically aroused by the atmosphere he creates. I’ll say no more, and leave you to discover how Roffey weaves politics, landscape, the personal and the public figures so that the bigger picture and the smaller picture somehow work together.

If I have a criticism it’s that at times Roffey’s style can follow the day-to-day in such a realistic way that it’s possible to leave the book down and pick it up again weeks later. This happens in some chapters during the first half where we see George’s view of the marriage and Trinidad. Having said that, even his account is interspersed with vivid scenes including the beating of a black teenager by the local police that had me on the edge of my seat.

Once the story moves to Sabine’s perspective I couldn’t get enough of it. There’s always a risk when a novelist tells a story through two different viewpoints that the reader will prefer one to the other. Roffey has imagined life through the experience of both George and Sabine so well that it still feels like a major achievement, and no doubt many male readers will empathise more with George.

Compassion is a quality I look for in a novelist and Roffey certainly has it. She has written so that we can understand the history of Trinidad and this particular marriage, and she has done it without allocating blame so that we understand the reasons for the failures of individuals and even Eric Williams. The characters come to life in our minds and we remember them as if we knew them, and it’s as if we’ve been to Trinidad or want to go. It’s a novel that will stay in the mind like a memory of a real experience, and I highly recommend it.

NaPoWriMo is Here - Time to Write a Poem a Day

2010-04-02T02:51:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Writing Month - or NaPoWriMo. I'll be attempting to write a poem a day, and not doing any editing or rewriting once I move on to the next day. Impossible to write a good poem like this? Well, it's how Robert Browning wrote Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. During a period of writers' block he decided to write a poem a day and this fabulous poem came in the first few days.

I've registered the Written Word Ning as an official NaPoWriMo group site so people can post their daily poems on the Forum there. Some are already posting and it's a helpful way to share and encourage each other through NaPoWriMo. You can also register yourself individually with the website where you'll be posting poems, or you can do it more privately.

It's helping me to get some poems out there which have been brewing in my head a little too long. So many other vital tasks take all the hours in the day and those poems linger inside. I'm glad April will be a month to prioritise poetry, and if you'd like to join in on the Written Word to share your daily poems you'll find it on http://www.writtenword.ning.com Click Forum on the toolbar and you'll see the NaPoWriMo poems.

I'm off for a break by the sea for a while and will post all my daily poems when I get back.

The Start of a New Publishing Company

2010-03-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

In these days of social networks we’re in the habit of saying what we’re doing each day, so it feels especially hard to keep a big secret. Every day my news is that I’m working on a new publishing company due to be launched, reading the submissions, making decisions on which will be the first books to be launched and really enjoying reading the fiction, poetry, short stories and nonfiction sent to me.

But of course I can’t say who the first authors are until we sign the contracts. I shouldn’t even say the company name or who my business partner is until we’ve signed that partnership agreement. It’s all imminent and I’m on all my social networks waiting for the moment when I can reveal all. That moment shouldn’t be too long.

It may seem like an unusual time to start a publishing company, with the recession affecting the business so seriously. There are reasons why I’m doing this now with my partner (I always feel I have to add ‘professional’ to that these days as the word has been given such a different meaning). It has long been my plan to start a publishing company, so when I was approached by a partner with many years of experience and skills I particularly admire I knew it was time to move ahead and do it.

There are other reasons why I would have thought of starting a publishing company now, even if it hadn’t been a plan I’ve been formulating for years. With the recession authors are being left without outlets for poetry and short stories as well as fiction, nonfiction and other forms. Even established authors have lost their publishing companies. This can’t go on.

Authors need to find a publisher and then concentrate on working on their next book knowing that it has a home. They can’t be struggling to find a new publisher when their efforts should be going into writing. The publishers are doing a fantastic job, but we need more outlets as the companies all seem to have long waiting lists of two or even five years.

Of course this means that, as publishers, we need to be able to keep going so that we can offer a secure place. My partner is keeping me to a strict business plan and I know we can go forward and offer this outlet to authors. He also has excellent experience on the production side and his graphics are wonderful. This leaves me free to do what I do best, which includes editing and finding talented authors.

This week I’ve been reading the novel and the poetry collection which should be our first two books, both by authors who have been previously published and whose work I have long admired. I couldn’t put their books down, which is a great sign, and can’t wait to see them launched so that others can enjoy them.

This is the realisation of an important dream for me and fills me with excitement. That thrill is tempered by the need to work on this professionally, to progress with my partner at the type of work we have both done for years. This way authors will have a place for their poetry, short stories, fiction, nonfiction and plays, and readers will be able to get their hands on some excellent books. We aim to publish 10 books in the first year and submissions are mainly by invitation at the moment while we cope with the task of setting it all up.

I’ll be adding blogs about the steps we’re taking as it will be of interest to many of you to hear about the birth of a publishing company in detail.

Camden and Lumen Poetry on Facebook

2010-03-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

There’s now a Facebook group for Camden and Lumen Poetry. This has been set up in response to feedback about the website, because people said they liked to be able to keep in touch online between events. This is particularly important for participants who enjoy the project but live all over the UK and beyond, and might not be able to get to London regularly.

The Facebook group will also let other people find out about Camden and Lumen Poetry and all members will be able to invite people from their contacts list. It’s such a worthwhile project to champion poetry and to help the homeless, and this should help spread the word. Of course, you're also welcome to join in with discussions on the Facebook group even if you can't get to Camden and Lumen events so long as it's all poetry or fiction-related.

It’s also possible to leave comments on the Facebook group page, and there’s a discussion forum if you’d like to raise some topics for debate. It doesn’t all have to be serious. Just introducing yourself and putting a link to your website is a great idea. Although many people at the events know each other well, a website link helps newcomers and let’s us all pass an enjoyable time reading each other’s work.

To get to the Facebook group go to the Camden and Lumen website on http://www.camdenlumen.wordpress.com and click on the link on the left of all pages. Alternatively you can search for Camden and Lumen when you’re on Facebook. Let the conversations begin!

I Am The Webmeister for Camden and Lumen Poetry

2010-02-06T07:23:00.000-08:00

I was pleased to be asked by Ruth O'Callaghan if I could create a website for the excellent Camden and Lumen Poetry project. We were chatting after a really fun and well attended open mic yesterday where I sloshed out the wine and I was really pleased to meet a poet friend called Peter who I have only 'met' online before. He gave a great reading of his poem Jazz Sax, which will go forward for consideration for the next anthology published by Camden and Lumen. If any of you can get to these events in London I'd love to meet you.

The website is very new as I've been building it this morning and doing all the writing for it so far plus adding photos! You can see it on http://www.camdenlumen.wordpress.com and I'd appreciate a bit of feedback in the comments on the site. Forthcoming events are listed there.

Camden and Lumen Poetry is a project organised by the poet Ruth O’Callaghan. The project not only supports poetry: all proceeds go to help the Cold Weather Shelters in Camden and Kings Cross. Regular poetry readings are held in the Camden and Lumen (Kings Cross) venues, with well-known authors appearing alongside new and unpublished poets.

Publishers and magazine editors present their writers, published poets make appearances, and the events include the opportunity for audience members to read at least one poem. Poets from the floor can submit the poems they read to be considered for an annual anthology published each Spring. This gives poets at all levels the chance to appear alongside the famous names in each anthology.

Carol Ann Duffy became a patron of Camden and Lumen Poetry in January 2010, adding extra prestige to this well-established and well attended project.

The events have a warm and friendly atmosphere, with wine and soft drinks, a raffle to win a surprise parcel of books. There are also books available to buy, including some available at discount generously provided by publishers. The price of entry, the drinks bar, the raffle and other fundraising activities all go to support the Cold Weather Shelters.

Both of the venues, Camden and Lumen, have the readings in the same place where people sleep in the Cold Weather Shelters, making it a particularly special place to attend and to support poetry.

The addresses for the venues are:

Camden Poetry – Trinity United Reform Church, 1 Buck St, Camden Town, London WC1

Tube: Camden Town

Lumen Poetry – Lumen, 88 Tavistock Place, London WC1

Tubes: Russell Square , Kings Cross, St Pancras.

Paul Chowder I Love You

2009-05-31T02:07:00.001-07:00

Sadly Paul Chowder only exists in Nicholson Baker’s latest novel 'The Anthologist', which was more like finding a soul-mate to me than finding a good read. Baker’s main characters tend to have obsessions which he follows with the attention to detail their own compulsions drive them to focus on. But Chowder is a little different to the anti-heroes of previous controversial novels who gained Baker a massive following by displaying the power to freeze women and remove their clothes, or showed us inside the minds of killers and other characters guaranteed to shock. Chowder has an addiction I could relate to: he’s a poet.

Could this be even more controversial? Are we really being asked to believe a publisher thinks a book could be marketed that concentrates on the workings of a mind that only seems to think about poetry? Was it always Baker’s devious plan to see how much we could take in his novels before assaulting us with his own true compulsion, the fanatical devotion of the poetic mind to the matters of writing and reading poetry?

Strange though it may seem, this unlikely novel will be out in summer and I certainly found it a page-turner. The plot revolves around Chowder, isolated in his house as his girlfriend Roz has quite understandably left him, trying to write the introduction to an anthology of poetry. He thinks Roz has left him because he spends the days singing along to music upstairs in his barn rather than getting down to the job of writing either the anthology or some poems of his own. Readers get the feeling her disappearance might have more to do with the fact that he can only think about poetry and his favourite women writers, particularly Mary Oliver and Sara Teasdale.

The novel opens with Chowder promising us that he will tell us everything he knows about poetry, all the tips and tricks. This is very titillating to poets or any readers who think they might find a way into understanding poetry by reading on. What follows is possibly the most realistic and detailed insight into what it feels like to be a writer that I have ever seen in a novel. Baker favours the use of first person narrative, giving a step-by-step walk through the day of his main character with tiny details included. We can hear the mouse scraping along his kitchen surfaces and see its droppings, and we can feel the corner of the poetry books he starts to sleep with for company falling and hitting his face.

Every moment is permeated with the loss of Roz and his yearning to get her back, and this is the part of the story that will appeal to readers whether or not they like poetry. Chowder is the typical man who has lost his partner by concentrating too much on his job or pastime, even though he thinks she has left because he's not productive (and women could relate to his problem too if they're devoted to their work). He believes that he could get her to come back by being able to focus and work, by turning out a bit of writing, but it’s the gentle way he remembers what it was like to reach out and touch her in bed that makes us realize what it is about him Roz would really miss and want to return to.

If I have a criticism of this novel it would be that some readers may want more about the relationship between Chowder and Roz to balance the poetry theme. Usually I like a short novel but I would have liked this one to continue for longer and enjoyed each memory of Roz, the moments he met her again, and each way he worked ideas at rekindling their relationship into his daily activities.

Not many fictional couple relationships are described in a way that makes readers wish they could have a similar experience of a long-term marriage or cohabitation, but Baker has really achieved this. As other women appear, and opportunities for a new relationship present themselves, Chowder considers each one but is never tempted away from what he really wants: the return of Roz. The way that Chowder tries to win her back by his struggle to work, making small presents, and acting calm and considerate when she dates a new man, all endear him to the reader. Empathy is so vital in this kind of novel and women readers will be wanting to reach out and hug him or find another like him.

As for tips about poetry, well there are some which are based on my own particular obsession so Baker has thought his way convincingly into the mind of a poet. Chowder wants to persuade us that previous thought about iambic pentameter is wrong, that the beat of a poem is based more on music than syllable count, and I’d go along with him on that. I won’t explain more and will leave you to find out why iambic pentameter has four beats to it if you tap your foot to the music of it, and why others are a waltz with three stresses. I’m a three-beat-to-the-line free verser myself. Chowder is also a free verse writer who wants to put the case for the superiority of rhyming poetry, which he wishes he could write better. The little designs to scan poetic lines, or to keep trying to convince us of what he means with musical notes, are very funny and exactly how I'd think about it myself.

The main joy of the poetic theme is that Chowder tells us so much about the lives and work of poets from the nineteenth century onwards, and tells it in the way we would speak of our oldest and closest friends. Like most writers he has lived with these poets through their books as if they were his nearest and dearest, and as the book progresses they appear to him in supermarkets and on the street. It’s as natural for Poe to appear to him folding underwear in the launderette as it is for his neighbour Nan to ask him round to play badminton.

Reading this made me want to reach for my own anthologies and look up all the poets he mentioned, and also the ones he so rightly says have been written out of literary history when they were taken out of the main anthologies due to modernist theories or the personal spite of selecting editors. Again, this is one of my favourite rants - the unfairness of how some poets have gone out of print because they were missed from major anthologies which are still influential. It's such fun to find an alter ego in a novel and to be able to laugh at ourselves and him.

The style is deceptively simple, the stream of consciousness talks straight to us from this perfectly understood and represented mind, we’re drawn right in and held captive by the narrative voice of Chowder from the first page to the last and I couldn’t stop until I had read it all. The humour made me laugh out loud and, over all, it was an uplifting read I’d highly recommend this summer. Poets and writers definitely shouldn’t miss it.

One question I would ask is: who is the first person narrator talking to in a book like this, as he seems to be talking to the people his anthology introduction is aimed at when it starts but he moves completely away from that to tell us why he can't write. When authors talk directly to us are they addressing the reader and is there something confusing in this approach? Perhaps the question arises in this book because the voice of Chowder starts by specifically addressing people with the offer of poetry writing tips, so we feel like his anthology readers, but we end up wondering what our role is in this conversation.

Virtual Office Brings Prizewinning Global Authors Together

2009-04-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling just a little smug as the Internet proves its worth more and more for writers and publishers. Those friends telling me off for frittering away time online will just have to leave me alone. It's all worth it, it is! The online television show I'm currently preparing for broadcast is just one wonderful example of how writers from all over the world can get together online to produce something extraordinary.

I'll be interviewing authors Sequoia Nagamatsu and Ovo Adagha about the One World anthology, recently released, which not only brings together the work of international authors but was also produced by them using online meeting places. Another intriguing feature of this book is that it includes winners of prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, alongside up-and-coming authors.

They will be on the Meet an Author show, which I host, and which is another example of how the Internet works alongside face-to-face book events. The show is filmed in the virtual world of Second Life, so authors from anywhere in the world can get together to be interviewed in front of an international audience. It streams live on alternate Saturdays on http://treet.tv at 10pm UK time (2pm California time) and is then available as a recording on http://slcn.tv on the Meet an Author page. I started the show because I really enjoyed it, and it's still great fun, but I've also come to realise what a fantastic way this is for authors to reach out to a global audience.

What makes the One World venture so fascinating is the way writers all over the world have used the Internet to collaborate on it. On the show Ovo Adagha and Sequoia Nagamatsu will represent the project and speak about the development of the book, thoughts on literature on the internet, globalization/equality and concepts of space and identity in virtual worlds as well as reading selections from their own work.

Here's Sequoia Nagamatsu's description of the project: 'The collection comprises stories from 23 writers from 14 countries including Pulitzer prize winner, Jhumpa Lahiri and recent MacArthur Grant recipient and Orange Prize Winner, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie and many up and coming names.. All of the writers worked in an online office to put the manuscript together, work on design, marketing and other tasks.'

The book was launched this month at the Oxford Literary Festivalat Christ Church College, Oxford and the authors are working on other events in locales around the world including outreach and presentation to high schools in America and now Second Life and online television as well. If you're on Second Life you can come to the event or go to the venue for more information http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cookie/24/136/66 If you're not on Second Life then you can see the show on the Treet TV links above.
You can find out more at: http://www.oneworldstories.com

Me and My Avatar in Poetry News

2009-03-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

I've been in the Poetry Society since I was a young teenager and the quarterly issue of Poetry Review through the post has had many emotional impacts. It has never made me laugh as much as it did today though. There was a face I recognised on the front page of Poetry News, the newspaper-style publication that accompanies Poetry Review these days. It was the face of my alter ego on the virtual world of Second Life - that tireless champion of poetry and writing in the 3D world, Ms Jilly Kidd. And boy does she look earnest.

I'm tempted to sing 'Me and my Avatar' to the tune of 'Me and My Shadow' as I talk about Jilly. She has accompanied me through the 3D world doing all sorts of things I'd love to be doing in the real world, and while others use Second Life to live out their various fantasies (which I'll leave you to imagine), ours seem to have centred very single-mindedly around writing and writers. I've brought my two sons up on my own since my husband left 8 years ago, so doing all this around London would be tricky as they need me at home, and poets are generally broke so childcare isn't always an option.

For years I've thought how lovely it would be to be in a Poetry Society publication, and I've admired the poets whose work I've seen in there. More and more I'm seeing names of people I know personally, which feels very special. The last thing I thought would be that I'd see myself there, with my better half Jilly talking about the virtual Stanza we run for the Poetry Society. These Stanzas are usually run by members in real towns all over the UK and abroad so that local poets can get together and encourage and support each other. I found it hard to get out to them myself but really wanted to take part and the Second Life Stanza has let me do that. I hope it also helps others who can't get out of the house easily for various reasons, and the added bonus is that it lets poets from all over the world get together.

I think I shall just go and share this moment of enjoyment with Jilly, and if you're a poet or writer maybe you'll join us on Second Life. It was fun to see how they overlapped photos of me and Jilly on the inside back page where the Stanza Profile articles appear, and how Jilly's photo made it to the top of the front page without me of course! There's no stopping that girl.

The Day My Book Arrived

2009-03-11T04:18:00.000-07:00

There was a knock on the door and I could see through the glass that it was the package I'd been waiting for. I could have kissed the Rastafarian postman carrying it, who was needlessy afraid of my chihuahua Max (he really should have his photo on here). Max was in my arms and very cool and relaxed as chihuahuas go. It's true what they say about dogs imitating their owners or vice versa.

The postman was carrying something very different: a brown package containing the author's copies of my poetry collection Never-Never Land. Let me just say here that I will Never Never give a book such an ominous title again. Delays beyond anyone's control have kept me waiting two years to hold this book in my hands, so just in case titles can have this effect I'll call the next one Hot Off the Press.

After such a long delay, punctuated by regular intimations that the book launch was imminent, I'd started getting excited so often that this time I expected to feel nothing. I thought I was numbed to that thrill of seeing and touching the actual printed item. I've been a writer most of my working life, mainly in journalism, so having my writing published is a familiar feeling. My first job as a journalist was when I temporarily left school at 16 wanting to go away and become an author, and a very brave editor of the Kentish Gazette in Canterbury let me join as a junior reporter.

For a year it was my job not only to write but also to get the cheese rolls from the pub downstairs for everyone at 11am, and also to go to the basement print works and gather a pile of newspapers as they did quite literally come hot off the press and into my arms. Upstairs the reporters waited hungrily to flick through the pages to see which of their articles had got pride of place and which had been considered good enough to earn them a byline.

Since then I've had many articles published and also a book of non fiction, plus 14 poems in an anthology by John Murray. But this is my first full collection and poetry is such a great love of mine. The feeling when I opened that parcel and lifted out a book, stroked its cover and looked through the pages, is almost indescribable and something I could never have imagined. I can only compare it to that feeling I had as a child at Christmas, the excitement that's so physical it stays as a thrill in the stomach and radiates through the whole body. It's a feeling you think you will never have as an adult, but there it was again. Bluechrome lets authors have a lot of say in the choice of cover and how they want their book to be in all sorts of ways. To have imagined a book, from its writing to its physical appearance, makes it a wonderful moment when you actually hold the finished article. I shall now go and see how it smells!

There are a limited number of signed copies available from Amazon reseller Muse Harbour Books.

Selling My Library

2009-03-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

It may sound like selling the family silver and it feels like it too. I'm selling off my lovingly chosen and read books - needs must. For the poet at the bus stop life is always lived very close to the breadline, and what with the credit crunch income and expenditure no longer add up. This writing habit is a hard one to finance.

'What?' I hear you mutter at your computer. 'But surely there's no money to be made from secondhand books.' Well, I've always wanted a secondhand bookshop, and apparently secondhand books are one business that's thriving during the recession. People might not usually skimp and save on the cost of a book, but suddenly they are. So I have to admit there's a certain pleasure when I receive an order from somebody wanting the very books I wanted to buy so much once upon a time. A pleasure that continues as I wrap and send them off and imagine that person watching for the post in anticipation of a good read.

One day I might leave London (hard to imagine in many ways) and one thing that would tempt me would be the possibility of getting a house and a little shop somewhere, by the sea probably as I only seem to love the city or the sea. Until then it's easy and free to do it all by mail order, offering all my beloved books bit by bit on Amazon. Off go my Carol Ann Duffys, my Paul Muldoon and even the long Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo that I lived with so happily for months. I'm an editor as well as a writer so I read almost as slowly as the authors write some of these books.

I had set up as an Amazon reseller before but didn't have much luck. This time it's definitely different, so perhaps people are realising secondhand books are a helpful saving. Hardback poetry books and sought after novels for as little as 1p each - the resellers can manage because Amazon charges so much for postage so that alone is enough. There are some books I just couldn't part with because I turn to them so often - all my Pascale Petit collections and the anthologies by Sylvia Plath and Hilda Doolittle. Apart from those I think I can part with them and find them at times I'm looking for a particular poem, and the flat is definitely starting to look less cluttered.

The emails are coming every day as the books are ordered. Is it the credit crunch, the desirability of my much loved books, or the name I chose for my virtual secondhand shop - Muse Harbour Books? Whatever it is it feels nice to know somebody else will enjoy them and as finances improve I may well buy some hardbacks for 1p each myself.

'How can you make any money on 1p sales?' I hear you ask. The postage from Amazon means you make at least 60p from each book and that's dinner for me. 'What??' I hear you cry. 'But Jamie Oliver rants on about dinner for under a fiver at Sainsbury's.' Well, I have some recipe and shopping tips to help you all through the recession and will share them in future posts. We won't starve in our garrets or ground floor flats, and whatever the recession brings the poet at the bus stop will be smiling and still writing.

They're giving my book away

2009-02-27T03:32:00.000-08:00

If last Friday was an exciting day for me with my first full collection being printed and stacked up somewhere all nice and new and making me want to get my hands on it, then today was also a bit of a surprise. The book hasn't yet arrived in my eager hands, but I logged on to check the publisher's website and found he's giving it away! Well, only two copies to people who email quickly and you can have a go on http://www.bluechrome.co.uk/ You might get a book before me, but I think my author's copies are going in the post as I blog.

'How thrilling this must be for you,' my friends who don't write poetry are saying, and even some who do. It's only when that book is out there that it suddenly hits you that people will be reading it, which is fine, but also all those people you've mentioned in it. And, as poetry is often truthful and mentions real people, then the time of publication feels more like a good time to hide away. As Stevie Smith says at the start of her Novel on Yellow Notepaper, 'Oh my friends, my beautiful friends, who will never speak to me again.' I'm sure some of you will be able to find the correct wording for that! Goodbye friends, not to mention family. Still, a bit of solitude is nice at this time of the year. Or for the rest of my life!

I wrote this book after four years living in Italy where I got married, had two sons, and never spoke English. The over stimulation of living in another culture and losing touch with my mother tongue meant that I didn't write in those years, so when I came back to London I wrote with a focus I had never experienced before. An author I read about years ago said that becoming a mother made her take a step forward in her writing, and that happened for me too. As if all my physical deadlines had been met, as if becoming a mother made me somehow complete, I felt free to be alone and to write.

My husband left and I wrote with a passion, going back over the years in Italy first, and then jumping backwards and forwards in time, getting out all those poems that were inside me somewhere waiting to be formed. Until, with the poem 'Never-Never Land', I caught up with the present and had come full circle, so it became the title poem. I'm working on a new collection now which is mainly set in the present, and just finishing a novel.

If it all loses me friends I suppose I'll make new ones - the kind of people daring enough to hang around with poets who say 'publish and be damned'. At last I understand why some poets like to be cryptic, and why ambiguity might be our best friend. Why some people would rather write fiction not drawn from life. I think I'll carry on with a plain spoken style though. You have to write what comes and I'm incredibly outspoken and open.

Why I'm at the bus stop

2009-02-23T02:27:00.000-08:00

I love that quote in the novel The Information by Martin Amis, where he says the more you have to work at your writing the less you earn - 'Ask the poet at the bus stop.' Yes, that's me ok. Broke at best and a lot worse in times of recession. Cheery though, as I'm a Londoner after all, so I'll just do a dance, flap my elbows, and sing like Tommy Steele.

Ah well. My first full collection Never-Never Land was printed last Friday and has arrived with the publisher, bluechrome, today. So I'm very excited. No, it won't make me enough to do my weekly shop unless something very extraordinary happens to the poetry market in times of recession. Perhaps people might turn to it as they do at other extreme moments of emotion, like funerals and weddings.

It's so strange to think of my book all stacked up somewhere and to imagine holding it someday soon in my hand. It's enough to inspire me to work even harder at the next one to make sure it earns even less. Amis wrote a funny short story too, where everything is reversed and poets are the ones who earn loads while agents get very little and sit in a pub bemoaning their fate.

Well, I've tried to say two main things about me in this first post: I'm a poet and I like Martin Amis. I have just one question to which there is no easy answer. Amis makes a load of money. Does that mean, according to his own philosophy, that he doesn't work at his own writing? Something is going on and I'll be discussing more about writing in future posts.