Melissa Davies had planned to fulfil a lifelong dream and open her independent bookshop, Pigeon Books, in Southsea, at the beginning of April. Those plans were put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic, but with a relaxation of lockdown rules from next week, bookshops will be able to open to customers - for the first time in over two months. Davies and her husband are now preparing for a very different sort of opening. "We had to quickly rethink our entire business plan and how we could operate, and now we're gearing up to open our doors for the first time under really different circumstances," she says. The tiny Pigeon Books will ask its browsing customers to use hand sanitiser, or wear gloves, before and after touching books, and will restrict the number of customers in the shop to two at a time.
Links of the week June 8 2020 (24)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
15 June 2020
At the Booksellers Association, a survey of membership found that nearly a third of independent bookshops were planning to open fully once restrictions were lifted. "Initially we were assuming that everyone would jump in, but there is quite a variety of opinion," according to Meryl Halls, the managing director. "Some shops are desperate to get back for a variety of reasons, some of that commercial and some of it community-based; and some are very cautious - they are worried about staff, family members, or might be shielding themselves."
The Covid-19 pandemic has already had a big impact on independent publishing. Some changes-working at home, employee furloughs, curbside shopping-were thrust upon the industry suddenly. And though they weren't part of a concerted effort to change old and inefficient business practices, they may indeed have that effect. Here are several new realities that are likely to survive the disease itself and lead to evolutionary leaps in book publishing.
All these new realities mean that a lot of smart, creative people who are spending more time at home will be producing more books. Is this a good thing? Not entirely, as it crowds the marketplace and may again create an unfortunate line between "real" and "hobby" publishing. But it does create a new industry of book reviewers, booktubers, and bookstagrammers monetizing their critical acumen and list curation.
There are many more ways the pandemic will likely affect publishing in the future. The course of the virus has been unpredictable and publishers need to be prepared for the unexpected.
So, we're getting there... slowly. The "new normal" is taking shape, and both sales people and buyers are emerging from furlough and playing catch up. By this time of year in the "old normal", we'd be well into our Christmas discussions, but understanding what the next few months hold, let alone what autumn and the all-important "Golden Quarter" will look like, is for most publishers and retailers a daunting task. Budgets are up in the air, and there are crucial decisions to be made about what to publish, when to publish, or even whether to publish this year at all.
The sharp end of the process, the sell-in to retail, is in the short to mid-term going to become even sharper. So what sales strategies should be front of mind to get the best results? I have five tips that I believe will get the best possible return at a challenging time.
More than 100 writers including Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo, Benjamin Zephaniah and Malorie Blackman have called on all major publishing houses in the UK to introduce sweeping reforms to make the overwhelmingly white industry more inclusive at all levels.
As black authors top the bestseller charts in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd, the newly formed Black Writers' Guild (BWG), which counts among its members some of Britain's best known authors and poets, has written an open letter airing concerns that "British publishers are raising awareness of racial inequality without significantly addressing their own".
Despite launching numerous schemes to attract a more diverse workforce over the last five years, the industry has failed to reflect Britain's racial and regional diversity with white, privately educated individuals massively over-represented. A major survey conducted by the Publishers Association last year found that "significant progress" was still needed to improve racial diversity, with only 11.6% of respondents identifying as BAME - lower than the UK population (14%), and significantly lower than London (40.2%), where all the major publishers are based. In comparison, the proportion who went to private school is three times the national figure.
The publishing industry is stilted and archaic. I worked in it for seven years, and left due to reasons I can't legally talk about. Though, in that time, I was able to enforce and oversee some steps towards sustainable change. At 4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins, I started the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story prize (still going strong, five years later). Staggered by the lack of underrepresented voices, I knew I had to do something, anything to give those voices a way to permeate the industry.
It is taken for granted that would-be writers will know what a literary agent is. But most have no idea how to structure a book proposal, or where to send it. This information is possessed by those in the know, and the people in the know often want to keep it to themselves. Let's talk about literary agents for a second; they are, effectively, tastemakers. Editors trust them to deliver books and authors that adhere to their (sometimes limited) taste. And what happens when these arbiters continue to work within the circles of writers who they already know? The same thing that always happens: books that follow trends, that look the same, that are written by the same kinds of people.
Roger Robinson is a writer who has taught and performed worldwide. His fourth poetry collection, A Portable Paradise, won the Royal Society of LiteratureThis British site may seem rather formal (stated aim ‘to sustain and encourage all that is perceived as best whether traditional or experimental in English letters, and to strive for a Catholic appreciation of literature’), but has a lively series of lectures and discussions involving distinguished authors. Also administers literary prizes. http://www.rslit.org/index1.html's Ondaatje prize last month, an award for a work evoking the spirit of a place: while his previous books have focused on the memory of the Caribbean, here he turns his gaze on England, unflinchingly portraying a place far from paradise as he tackles topics including the Grenfell Tower disaster, the Windrush scandal, and the legacy of slavery. The collection also won the TS Eliot prize and is shortlisted for the Derek Walcott prize. Robinson was born in Hackney in 1967 to Trinidadian parents and moved to Trinidad aged four, before returning to the UK at 19.
Poets don't get into poetry for money, they do it for vocation - I feel like that anyway. Poets can touch hearts and minds; they can translate trauma into something people can face. Sometimes there's a cost for the poet to do that as it takes looking at the trauma right in the face and then allowing others to bear the idea of trauma safely. That's why I write poetry. Poems are empathy machines.
It took me many years and a lot of work to complete my first crime novel. Along the way I learned a lot about the writing process - or at least, as it applies to me. Every writer is different, so different things will suit different people. There is no right or wrong way. It's really about what works for you. Having said that, here are some things I learned which I hope you may find useful.
1. Write every day
Writing, like any other exercise, gets a little easier the more you do it. Not that the writing itself is easier, it's just that you become more accustomed to doing it. You'll be more adept at getting into a writing frame of mind and jumping right back into your story.
Like running a marathon, it takes regular training to be able to tackle such a mammoth feat. Writing every day flexes your mental muscles and whips your imagination into shape, for the long and arduous task of writing a novel. And, just like a marathon, it'll still be hard but working at it every day will make it feel just that little bit easier.
Have you ever dropped a thermometer and watched its ball of mercury break into a scatter of glistening droplets? That's my mind right now. The table next to my bed is anchoring a tottering tower of books I have begun and then abandoned, not out of displeasure but because... well, I actually couldn't say exactly why I have put down the Andrew O'Hagan and picked up the Fernanda Melchor and then switched over to Samuel Butler. I am merely following my mind's whims and my mind is a whim factory, goaded into hyper-productivity by the pandemic.
But there is a voice, a reading voice not my own, the voice of a stranger who can cut through the chatter, calm the restlessness, and rivet the attention-the voice of the great British actor Juliet Stevenson. Over the past eighteen months, and for nearly 300 hours, I have been listening to her read Mrs. Dalloway, Sense and Sensibility, The Paying Guests, The Wings of the Dove, The Little Red Chairs, and several others. In the past-and now, three months ago can accurately be called The Past-I have mainly listened to Juliet in my car, while I made my rounds up here in the Hudson Valley, where we think nothing of driving an hour for a haircut.
Now in this time of no visits, no tennis, no poker, no movies, no shopping, no restaurants, and the needle on my gas gauge has barely stirred, I must listen in the house. Home with Juliet-and I do not live alone!
American dirt was supposed to be a major book of the year. Jeanine Cummins's novel, which follows a Mexican bookseller and her son as they dodge cartel violence and attempt to cross the border into the United States, had all the makings of a blockbuster. Cummins's publisher, Flatiron Books, had reportedly paid out a seven-figure advance and was sparing no expense on marketing; the book was blurbed by heavyweights Stephen King and John Grisham; and, sealing the deal, it was chosen for Oprah's Book Club. More than a mere bestseller, though, American Dirt was positioned as the next Great American Novel. (Crime author Don Winslow called it "a Grapes of Wrath for our times.") The book was meant to illuminate the politics of the present, when migrants of all ages are being detained en masse along the US border. Then, a few weeks before its January release date, the backlash began.
American Dirt was still a stunning commercial success-it has spent three months and counting on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Critically, however, it's been a disaster. As the social media flak and denunciatory essays piled up, a common theme emerged: Cummins and Flatiron could have sidestepped much of the backlash if they'd hired a sensitivity reader to make sure the book's representations were accurate. "[Cummins is] a seasoned writer, and American Dirt is her fourth book," wrote Aya de Leon in Guernica. "In her author's note, she expressed concern that she might fall short: ‘I was worried that, as a nonimmigrant and non-Mexican, I had no business writing a book set almost entirely in Mexico, set entirely among immigrants,' . . . But it never occurred to her to pay someone to make sure she got it right? In the publishing industry, sensitivity readers are common knowledge. With a seven-figure advance, Cummins had plenty of resources to hire one."
Look at a large set of data for long enough and you'll see a story. It could be a dystopia or the early part of a post-apocalyptic horror, but in this case, it's the story of a dysfunctional relationship. It's a relationship that's ending badly because it started badly, with power imbalances from the start, and today, it could be that neither party is willing or able to do the work to set things right.
Ian McEwan once said that when women stop reading, the novel will be dead, and as much as I loathe agreeing with him, the facts bear that out. Survey after survey has found that women read more than men: A National Endowment for the Arts survey from 2002 finds a steady 10 to 13 percent gap between men and women as far back as 1982, and more recent studies tell the same story, with men reporting spending much less time per week reading.
In the mid-20th century, a feverish movement for independence from colonial governments paired with a growing university-educated class, who pushed for education on the continent to be decolonized, created the perfect conditions for the birth of anglophone African publishing. In 1962, the African Writers Series (AWS) was founded by London-based publisher, Heineman, whose editorial manager at the time, Alan Hill, noted that Nigeria was considered "a place where you sold books rather than a source for new writers." The series publication was poised to bring post-colonial Africa to the world through literature while allowing African writers space to create independently, for themselves and their futures.
Despite the good works they did at the time, the AWS also left an irreparable damage to Africa's literary canon by not publishing more female and other social minority writers at a critical time when Anglophone literature from Africa was gaining recognition and rapid growth. By publishing less than a handful of women after decades of consistently churning out works by African men, the African Writers Series (AWS) threw away an opportunity to archive and curate more literary evidence from diverse experiences and voices.
8 June 2020
Over the past two weeks, people around the globe have gathered in protest against the terrible deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. In the UK, within just a few days, it was revealed that the case of Belly Mujinga, who died of coronavirus after being spat at in Victoria station, had been closed while the government's report on race and Covid-19 showed that, as suspected, black people are disproportionately dying from the virus.
Amid all the fury, corporations have been quick to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and publishers have been among them. As readers around the world have flocked to buy more anti-racist books by black authors, each day editors, agents and authors have taken to social media to call for more action. Mainstream publishers have made donations to Black Lives Matter causes, while the #InclusiveIndies fundraiser has raised more than £150,000. Over the weekend, authors also shared how much they were paid to write their books via the hashtag #publishingpaidme, which, among other things, exposed racial disparities in the advances paid by the big publishers. Agents and editors have been more vocal in asking black authors to submit their work in the future.
AdvertisementBut if we are going to inspect the industry's support of Black Lives Matter, we must honestly assess its existing support for black voices. Year in, year out, the numbers have shown all the ways publishing has failed to reflect society.
Books have, for so many of us, been a lifeline. The clichés and platitudes about them being a portal to other worlds, that books can change and save lives, that they help connect us to something bigger than ourselves, are all true. I know that from my own experience and because in moments like the one we are in now, where thousands of protestors have taken to the streets in response to the continued police violence against black people, thousands more people are online sharing resources to help people understand the importance of this movement and how we got here. They are sharing books.
Books afford us the opportunity to read about our past and present while engaging with ideas that will help us to imagine our future. We are reminded that it is our duty to create a new antiracist paradigm. And while we're thankful for the existence of these books, the path that many of them took to get here reflects the very racist structure that these books are meant to challenge. It is not only that the world of books is as white as every other major institution in America; it is that it makes nonwhite writers perform their deservingness in a way that is discouraging at best and prohibitive at worst.
Writers including Malorie Blackman and Nikesh Shukla have urged writers of colour not to give up and that their stories matter, as the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag took off over the weekend to illustrate the disparity between the advances paid by publishers to non-Black authors versus Black authors.
Made all the more stark as some white authors revealed their latest advances for multiple hundreds of thousands, Blackman urged "people of colour" not to let the disclosures put them off a career as a writer or illustrator: "A plea to POC embarking on a writing career," she said, "PLEASE don't let #PublishingPaidMe put you off being an author and/or illustrator if that's the career you're currently pursuing. Your voice, your work, your stories matter. The situation will improve. It has to."
A little over half a century ago, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and the protests that rose in its wake, Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/'s then editor-in-chief, Chandler B. Grannis, felt compelled to speak up. "Modern Americans like to think of their society as one marked by scientific achievement and the advance of humanistic culture," he wrote, "but once again we have seen this pretension brutally shattered. Once again the American heritage of violence-perpetuated by nostalgic tradition, racial fear, a confusing war, misapplied nationalism, and television programming-has struck down one of our noblest and most needed citizens."
The editorial might as well have been written yesterday. Today, decades after the victories of the civil rights movement, America is still plagued by so many of the same horrors that convulsed the country through the 1960s-racism, economic inequality, police brutality.
Across the country, people have gathered together over the past week to demonstrate their anger and grief in the wake of the killing of yet another unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of the police. They do so under the auspices of the First Amendment.
An open letter to the Poetry Foundation from a group of its fellows and programmatic partners and signed by more than 1,800 individuals issued in response to the organization's June 3 statement on the killing of George Floyd and other current events calls for significant change at the organization.
Specifically, the letter demands the immediate resignation of both Poetry Foundation president Henry Bienen and board of trustees chair Willard Bunn III. (This has now happened.)
The Society of AuthorsThe British authors’ organization, with a membership of over 7,000 writers. Membership is open to those who have had a book published, or who have an offer to publish (without subsidy by the author). Offers individual specialist advice and a range of publications to its members. Has also campaigned successfully on behalf of authors in general for improved terms and established a minimum terms agreement with many publishers. Recently campaigned to get the Public Lending Right fund increased from £5 million to £7 million for the year 2002/2003. Regularly uses input from members to produce comparative surveys of publishers’ royalty payment systems. http://www.societyofauthors.org/' second real-time survey confirms extent of impact of COVID-19 on authors' income and wellbeing as implications for daily life and publishing industry continue to emerge.
We have released the results of our second Authors in the Health Crisis survey assessing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on authors' livelihoods.
Lost income 57% of respondents reported that their incomes had declined since the outbreak of COVID-19, up over a third from 41%. Only 23% said that the impact of Coronavirus on their earnings remained to be seen, down from 32% a month earlier.
The proportion of respondents unable to mitigate their financial losses following the outbreak increased from 57% to 62%, reflecting growing unease, with only 15% of respondents reporting that they expect their incomes to remain stable or increase following the public health crisis, down from 18%.
Writing about the people you are closest to can be one of the most rewarding experiences a writer can have-but also the scariest. This is a big topic, so I will cover it in two parts. First: what to put on the page. And second: how to deal with your subjects' reactions to what you write about them.
Lets start, as some of my favorite memoirs do, with a cliffhanger. Here is what you should not do: When your publisher gives you a January 1 deadline for submitting the final manuscript, you should not print out a copy for each of your family member-characters and send those copies all at the same time, which guarantees you will receive their responses right before Christmas.
Neil Gaiman has dug out a story he first wrote on a scrap of paper more than a decade ago and turned it into a new book for "anyone of any age who likes pirates, cooking, swashbuckling and/or doughnuts".
The American Gods and Good Omens author's rhyming Pirate Stew, out in October, will be illustrated by the former UK children's laureate Chris Riddell. Gaiman has previously collaborated with Riddell on titles including The Graveyard Book, Coraline and Fortunately, the Milk, with characters from the latter set to appear in the forthcoming book.
I pronounced rather grandly recently that smaller publishers are the delicatessens of the publishing world. We don't publish that much but when we do, it stays with the reader and lingers on the taste buds of the creative mind that bit longer.
Corporate publishing has a different economic imperative, and I understand that - it is a different business model, they have to satisfy the demands of shareholders. They are the supermarkets of the publishing world and have the heft to stack them high and sell them cheaper.
Of course, there are exceptions and they do publish some fantastic authors and books but within literary fiction it is the smaller presses that appear to be doing most of the heavy lifting and finding and developing new voices and writers.
Book lovers' passion for words on the printed page has inspired them to donate millions of dollars to help keep their favorite independent shops afloat and workers paid during coronavirus-prompted closures and restrictions.
In San Francisco, supporters of City LightsHandy site which provides links to 7,500 US publishers' sites and online catalogues. www.lights.com/publisher/ Bookstore, home of the beat poets, donated more than $493,000 to a GoFundMe campaign to help the store stay afloat while it was closed.
"After eight weeks of mandatory sheltering-in-place, our booksellers are now allowed back in the store, and boy does it feel amazing to finally be able to get back to work!!" a post on City Lights' web page said. The renowned destination bookstore reopened May 20.
The coronavirus pandemic has seen a "huge swing" towards print on demand (p.o.d.), Ingram's senior vice-president David Taylor has said. He also warned that physical booksellers could have difficulty clawing back trade from online retailers after lockdown.
Taylor said some publishers had even used p.o.d. as a backup for frontlist titles during the crisis. He suggested the technique could help make the supply chain less fragile in the future. Taylor said: "Publishers are putting titles into print on demand who previously may have been reluctant to do so. Fulfilling a virtual inventory and manufacturing it is a less fragile supply chain than printing a book cheaply and shifting it round the world and putting it in a warehouse."
While none of the major New York City publishers who took part in PW's survey about their efforts to return employees to their Manhattan headquarters had fixed plans, no companies said they expected to begin bringing staff back in a meaningful way before Sept. 1. For the most part, they see the week of Labor Day as a target, but acknowledged that date may not be realistic. Several said they see a limited reopening coming after Labor Day (which is September 7 this year).
PW sent a brief questionnaire to all of the Big Five trade houses plus Abrams, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media, Kensington, Norton, Scholastic, and Workman. While all said there are too many uncertainties about the future course of the virus to make final plans, there was consensus around some issues. There was widespread agreement that the top consideration before publishers will fully reopen will be the condition of New York City's mass transit and how comfortable workers will be using subways, buses, and trains. Several publishers said they plan to stagger work hours, something that has been recommended by New York City officials to ease overcrowding during usual rush hours.