IRON Press Editor PETER MORTIMER on his midwife role
Copies of the latest IRON Press book arrives from the printers and I realise why I am left cold by online printing.
Good luck I say to those aspirant authors who have found a voice by publishing online; those brave souls who have faced the indignity of waiting six months for a response to their magnum opus from a publishing house, only to receive a two line rejection slip. Even here the writers can count themselves lucky. An increasing number of publishers have pulled up up the drawbridge entirely against new work unless supplied via an agent.
And the chances of a new writer getting an agent are as likely as the homeless being offered a ticket to a BuckPal garden party.
I am not suggesting that out there is a huge seething army of brilliant but frustrated writers. Good writing is rare and much outnumbered by the mediocre. The fact that much work that is written remains unpublished is not necessary a bad thing. Who would want to read it?
This humble opinion has no statistical evidence apart from 45 years of editing IRON Press during which time I have read a quantity of manuscripts which in a single pile would reach the moon – and a less expensive way of getting there than NASA.
I applaud every one of these many thousand authors for committing themselves to the written word. And there is always Amazon if they want to self-publish. Good luck to them!
But I have yet to meet an author, be they self-publishing or publishing online who would not prefer their book to be given out to the world by a recognised and respected publishing house.
For the birth of such a book, the publisher acts as midwife; a midwife who has overseen this fragile creation through its every stage - months probably years of gestation, first in the writing, then in working on the design of the book and its cover. So that finally comes that unique aesthetic pleasure, that unrivalled moment of holding the book in your hand, flicking through its pages, a faint whiff of ink emanating as you do so.
This feeling is unlike any other. And the tactile sensation is important. A book on the web is like a baby in an incubator; you can look but you cannot touch. Here you can touch, stroke, fondle, caress, put down, pick up, put down, pick up, put down, pick up.
No-one can take this book away. Ever. And it is not simply floating in the ether.
IRON Press only publishes four or five books a year, but even after 45 years that sense of a small miracle remains at that moment of holding the book in your hand for the first time. It is what makes worthwhile all the frustrations, the sheer exhaustion, the penury, the occasional sense of irrelevance, the constant sense of being on the losing side, the absence of holidays and all the other emotions/experiences that are everyday for any publisher of a small press. Some IRON Press books are also published on kindle. I can’t ever be arsed to check the sales figures - pretty disgraceful, I agree.
At this moment. I am one of a handful of people yet to see and hold this book (I assume a few at the printers will have done so). I have no idea whether it will receive a rapturous reception, one of total indifference, or even derision. Such matters are now out of my and also the writer’s hands (or in this case, the writers, as it is an anthology of six authors).
But it is here. It is out in the world. And right now, I can’t stop looking at it.
(The IRON Press book Peter Mortimer can’t stop looking at is This Cullercoats - The Work of Six Village Writers, to be launched at the IRON OR Festival, Cullercoats on June 22nd.)
END
]]>through Tyneside teenagers of the Orpheus & Euridice myth. Its powerful language haunts me.
I am also haunted by the second hardback. But in a very different way. It is more than 400 pages long, printed on high quality paper and has a full colour cover. Not so long ago, you would expect the writing in any such book at least to achieve some fairly high level of professional competence.
This no longer applies. Democracy has been unleashed upon literature. Modern technology means sisters and brothers are now doing it for themselves. Can’t find a publisher? No problem. Armies of firms are queuing to run off your magnum opus, with scarce a regard for the content. Publishing in many instances, has simply become printing.
And where traditional publishers were once restrained by the need of economies of scale, such links are now irrelevant..
You can have as few or as many copies as you like, same unit price. One copy? You’re on! And suddenly the world is awash with published writers. Whether they can write or not is another matter.
This second book was sent to me by the author seeking IRON Press’ interest. Would we now like to publish it (republish it)? This is increasingly common. Where once you would get a typed mss from aspirant scribblers, now you often get a perfectly formed print-on-demand copy of their work. In this case, the author’s self-belief shone through the covering letter, convinced that here was a major contribution to the literature of the 21st century and would be acknowledged as such the moment it was exposed to the public at large.
I began to read the book. By half way down the first page, my jaw dropped. By page two I was forced to put it to one side, and exclaim ‘phew!’ At the bottom of that page I took myself off to lay down in a darkened room. Few novels have had such an extreme effect on me in such a short space of time.
Quite simply, it was the worst writing I have ever encountered. And I speak as an editor of some 45 years standing who during that stint has probably read the work of more than 10,000 authors, most of them doomed never to be seen in print. Except now they often are in print. In a way. There again, they’re not. Take your pick.
I put the book down and stare at it. I pick it up and glance through the pages, pausing at a random paragraph in the forlorn hope that glinting there will be some small diamond of creativity, a possible hint of submerged writing talent. None appears. I am in a wasteland, a barren desert devoid of the waters of the imagination.
I become depressed. It seems a travesty that such writing should be presented in such a
lavish manner. It is as if a lower Sunday League footballer were to run out for Man Utd with no raised eyebrows. The book is a denial of natural law. The book offends the eye
of someone who believes that one way or another a book had to earn the right to be in print, any print and that the process of any book coming to fruition is a special one.
And now I am faced with this! I tell myself it is none of my concern. I tell myself the person has every right fork out their loot if it makes them happy. No-one has to read the book, after all. What harm can it do?
Yet I cannot rest. Something is not right. For some weeks now, I have passed the book on the stairs. Each time it pulls me up short. Each time I realise I have thus far failed to reply. Yet I feel duty-bound to reply in some way. I sit down at my desk. I prepare to type.
“Dear………….’
An editor’s lot it not always a happy one.
]]>It had been a long time since I'd been so nervous. Me and Max Farrar from Remember Oluwale were at the Saboteurs in London, palms sweating, heart racing, waiting for them to call out the winner for “Best Anthology”.
Getting here had been a long road, and I don't just mean the train journey from Leeds to London. In March 2016, Max had approached me to edit a book that responded to David Oluwale's life and death. The anthology had been a voluntary, time-intensive project involving lots of hours on my part, with support from Leeds Big Bookend, Fictions of Every Kind, the Remember Oluwale charity, and Valley Press.
During the editorial process I had felt huge amounts of pressure to get it right. To do justice to this man's memory, and to make sure that everybody involved in the process met deadlines. Though there were a lot of people involved, there had been one person mainly steering the project – me, and now here I was at the Saboteurs, with Max, hoping that we'd win.
I must confess that I initially knew little of David's story. To prepare, I read Kester Aspden's “The Hounding of David Oluwale”, a thorough and shocking book, and discovered that David Oluwale was a man who had immigrated to Leeds from Nigeria in the 1960s, who had spent most of his time in the city either homeless, or in a psychiatric ward. He was victimised by members of the police force, and eventually found dead floating in the River Aire. Nobody was ever convicted for his murder.
Far from trying to create a comprehensive book about David Oluwale, (we are far from the first group to create works of art in his memory), I aimed to put together a book that responded to the themes in David's life, that anybody could delve into even if they weren't familiar with his story. During the Writing Prize, we received over a hundred entries of prose and poetry. All entries were blind-read by a wonderful, very experienced and diverse reading team, who then voted on their favourites, with each “yes”-voted entry getting a second read by me.
Choosing twenty entries to publish was not easy. Some of the entries referenced David directly, many didn't. A lot of entries were similar to one another in approach or form, and as editor, I wanted to find a balance between those which talked about David directly, and those which used his life story, and the issues, in a more oblique way.
Two stories that caught my attention early on were Koyejo Adebakin's true life story, 'In the Cold', in which our narrator and his family are evicted and told: “Neither... of... you... has... recourse... to... public... funds”, and Gloria Dawson's 'Promises (for David Oluwale)', which covers poverty, social justice, work, and exclusion, in just under 2,000 beautifully written words: “I sit with them, I am the man with the city's disorder, I am the woman in the crumpled skirt.” Though each covered similar ground, their diversity of approach was enough to make me want to include both. While Adebakin's story felt real, something you might overhear on a bus, Dawson's story showed us a desperate world glimpsed through poetic vignettes.
The poetry category, similarly, gifted us with a range of material and approach. Alan Griffiths' 'In The Day Room' was a reading team favourite, with its powerful image of a man completing a jigsaw: “the pictures perfect on the lids / a country farm yard, park gardens or dales, / all stone walls, daffodils and clouds, / but the pieces never all the right way up”. This poem, with its resonances of psychiatric-ward boredom, I liked for the simplicity of its approach.
Another poem which I included was 'He Remains', by Cherie Taylor-Battiste. This was one of the many pieces sent in that talked about David Oluwale directly. It struck me with the immediacy of its voice, as though being spoken right into my ear. “David's last run with head broken heart strong pushed on all our thighs / Carrying The Black Man's burden and tripping on Darwinian ties”. As a poem, it spoke so directly, so distinctly, that I couldn't help but want to put it in the anthology.
I could talk about each individual piece directly, and what it was about each that I loved: their telling of the lived experience of asylum-seeking, or of social exclusion and prejudice (David Cundalls' 'Signs and Wonders', Helen Forbes' 'The Curse of Naples'); their mention of the particulars of David's story – the geography of Leeds in Ian Harker's 'Aire', the policemen who taunted him in Char March's 'Son-of-the-Mother-Whose-Children-Are-Like-Fish'; the characterful exploration of identity and history by an Efik narrator in Anietie Isong's 'The Storyteller' – but I suspect that there isn't room here. I will say though, that one thing that struck me over and over again during the editing process was how current “David's issues” still are. Those facts of institutional racism, of systematic social exclusion, don't and have never gone away. The diversity of entries to this competition was testament to that fact.
Our longlist was a brilliantly varied collection: Max Farrar and Sai Murray of Remember Oluwale both had chance to read it before it went to press, and helped with their input and comments. We were keen to include works that had formerly been published and created about David Oluwale, and were lucky to be able to include work by Caryl Phillips, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Rommi Smith and the Baggage Handlers, among others.
Getting it all to press on time wasn't easy: negotiating with 20 poets and writers during the editorial process, as well as juggling the judging process for the competition, and bringing in all the previously-published material and getting everything into the manuscript in time for it to be typeset, is probably the editors' version of riding an unbraked bike downhill towards a clifftop.
When the book came out though, I realised it had all been worthwhile. Gathering those previously published works together with the new pieces, in a book with David's picture on the front, was a fitting way to remember David Oluwale. Ian Duhig read at the Leeds launch; we gave prizes out to our competition winners. Max sourced a CD player and some boxed wine for the party. Authors came from as far away as London to celebrate the anthology launch.
We knew that the book was something to be proud of, and that it was a good artistic response to David's story. The only thing we didn't know was, would anybody else agree?
So it was with train tickets in hand, and a set of pre-booked Eventbrite tickets, we found ourselves at the Saboteur Awards, hoping to win. Max was primed with a bottle of champagne from the bar, perhaps he knew something I didn't, and when the Saboteur judges read out the name, “Remembering Oluwale,” a cheer went up so rowdy I felt as though I was back in Leeds again, watching football in a pub. We'd won!
It was a validating end to an immersive and important project, something I was very proud to have been able to be a part of. I went home with a head full of happy memories, and a banging headache from the afterparty.
The Best Anthology trophy now sits in pride of place on my writing desk.
Buy the book here.
This comes just days after author A L Kennedy blasted British publishers for not producing more literature in translation.
She said British publishing’s aversion to risk meant it currently had ‘little appetite’ for foreign works, especially since the abolition of the Net Book Agreement which fixed prices for books, leading the industry ‘into a territory of simple calculations of profit and loss’.
However, Valley Press, founded by publisher Jamie McGarry in 2008, is setting itself up as one of the exceptions that prove the rule with Mountain Stories by bestselling Chinese writer Ye Guangqin, due out in July, followed by six more translated titles in 2018 and 2019 all by authors from the Shaanxi province of north-west China.
‘Readers might not have heard of Shaanxi before, or be particularly familiar with the bestselling Chinese-language authors who call that province their home, but they soon will be,’ said Jamie.
‘We've signed an agreement to publish a whole series of titles from the region's finest authors, translated with great care by a team at Northwest University in the city of Xi'an, then edited and proof-read by native English scholars.
‘These books offer an astonishingly fresh literary experience for UK readers – and for us at Valley Press. It's something genuinely new for us to get to grips with and, as you can probably tell, I'm very excited by the whole idea.’
But just how did the ‘whole idea’ of bridging the 5,000-mile gap between Shaanxi and Scarborough come about?
‘Dr Robin Gilbank of Northwest University’s School of Foreign Languages was looking for a UK publisher for this project. He has a family connection to Scarborough and they suggested Valley Press. So, we met in local independent bookshop Wardle & Jones and the arrangement progressed from there,’ said Jamie.
‘It really was a chance encounter of deeply engaged literary people thousands of miles apart.’
:: Mountain Stories, a collection of six tales about the colourful legends and everyday absurdities of life in China’s Qinling Mountains, is available to pre-order from Valley Press, and is represented to the trade by Inpress.
]]>1. You can judge a book by its cover
That’s what book jackets are there for. Readers need signposts, the visual signpost of a jacket is the most immediate hook you have to engage with a potential buyer. Publishers who ignore this essential part of their book production do so at their peril.
2. Sales is not a dirty word
If you are putting all that effort into writing or editing or designing something to the best of your ability it has value and should be shared with people!
Publishing is a commercial art form, if you hope to publish more you need to sell the books you have.
The best independent publishers manage to bridge the gap between integrity and breaking even.
3. Metadata rules
Not the most glamorous of subject matters, but definitely the most important. Statistics show that the more detail and visuals you attach to ISBNs, the better the sales. Get the metadata right initially and the sales and publicity will follow.
4. You don't need to invest all your cash in stock
Digital printing, short run printing and print on demand have transformed publishing. The old days of having to pay upfront for a print run with no idea of how many books might actually sell are over. Independent publishers are capitalising on this, these days a new publisher doesn’t even need to print a single stock copy, they can just print to demand. (Although some stock does help Inpress!)
5. You can be a global sales and distribution network from the minute your book is published
Companies like Ingram Lightning Source can be your worldwide distribution network. Share your book files with them, and their network of printers will ensure your title is orderable through online and bricks and mortar retailers worldwide.
6. Writers, no matter how obscure your potential bestseller, there is a publisher out there for you
The PA, Publishers Association, the biggest body representing publishers, who lobby government and put on major conferences has approximately 1200 members.
The IPG Independent Publishers Guild has approximately 600+ members
Inpress has 45 members
And there is a huge amount more out there, Inpress is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to smaller independent publishers
You can look them up – the Writers and Artists Yearbook 2017 with over 4,000 entries of who to contact where across marketing and the media
Mslexia publish list of literary independent publishers which includes 250 small indie presses and 200 literary magazines.
I have no idea how many publishers there are out there, but will find out and update this blog!
7. People won’t buy books if they've never heard of them
One of the perks of big commercial publishers is that they have departments dedicated to sales, marketing, publicity, online communities. That doesn’t mean small indie publishers can’t achieve as good results as the big ones, they have the advantage of knowing their market intimately. Poetry publishers have nurtured their communities way before the advent of social media.
8. There are more people writing poetry than buying it
This point is based on no empirical evidence, just a feeling….
I had no idea until I started at Inpress how many small indie publishers there were. I had no idea how many poetry publishers there were out there producing not only books but pamphlets and chap books. And I certainly had no idea how many people out there are writing poetry!
9. Don't let your mum phone your managing director
Or, don’t go on a work trip to the Middle East a few days before the US invades Afghanistan. Staff insurance policies were discussed, I’m reliably informed.
10. Print or Ebooks, they all have a place in the modern publishing eco-system
Yes, ebook sales are declining, but that is just all the many formats finding their place in the market. I like reading physical books in the main, but I do enjoy a Georgette Heyer on my phone, so many people I know now love audiobooks, it’s an ever changing confusion of delights.
11. Biggest is not necessarily best
What are smaller independent publishers doing?
Shaking things up
Publishing from passion
Being commercial with integrity
Being supported by ACE
Not being supported by ACE
Working together
Working alone
Working online
Publishing print only
Publishing digital only
Publishing hand-stitched-letterpress-printed-only
Doing what they want
I am constantly amazed at the ingenuity, agility and doggedness of independent publishers and publishing. I’ve said it before elsewhere, so apologies for repetition, but what they lack in resource they make up in resourcefulness. Long live the independent publisher!
]]>
If you work at home you’ll be used to those regular doorstep callers who flip open a suitcase full of gardening gloves, dishcloths, feather dusters and chamois leathers while showing you a document explaining how they’ve been a bad lad but are now trying to make a new life.
I always buy something even if a couple of dischcloths can run out a fiver. From the last caller I bought a special dog brush for seven quid. All I need now is a dog.
What follows has nothing to do with those guys except a new breed of caller has started ringing the doorbell – or at least my doorbell. These unfortunates are seeking sanctuary from a cruel and pitliless system that has thrown them on the scrapheap of life. They are not asylum seekers, redundant bank clerks from HSBC, or train guards laid off by Southern Rail.
No, these are individuals who often have invested their entire life savings in what they thought would be an education and a qualification which would open for them many doors. Now they find all doors firmly shut and getting shutter by the month.
Imagine if this happened to doctors, engineers, or brain surgeons or other qualified folk whose education almost guarantees a life of full employment.
I give you, ladies and gentleman, one of the great tragedies of the early 21st century;
The creative writing graduate. Their numbers are increasing as are their fees. They will usually pay many thousands of pounds to be led into the world of the literati, to sit at the feet of great poets novelists and playwrights who will reveal to them the secrets of creative success. Or such is the theory.
Look carefully and you can spot them throughout the country. They can be seen, pathetically waving in the air their certificate to prove they have successfully completed the course. They make tracks to first one editor then another, they knock at the door of this publisher, then that publisher. They offer up their great works, their novels, their full-length plays, their epic poems. And to what response? None.
For as the number of these writing students has grown (no self-respecting university or college is now without its own creative writing course), so the world of publishing has shrunk – and alarmingly. Fewer books, fewer magazines, fewer newspapers, more online tosh. The last thing the few remaining publishers dream of is a whole new army of literary aspirants beating a path to their door. Many publishers don’t even answer.
A quick check of publisher details reveals many now advertise no postal address nor even a email submissions address. Many will accept submissions from agents only (and ask any aspirant author about the chances of landing an agent). Some small publishers just bring out work from their chums.
As ever, a lot of the writers struggling for publication aren’t much good. But authors bearing creative writing degrees tend to think they are.
Good or bad, once outside the shelter of academia, these aspirants shiver from the cold reality of the writing world. As an editor, my heart obviously bleeds for them, though in this very act of bleeding I glance anxiously up the road to check if any more are heading my way.
Graduates of the creative writing degree have become the new deserving poor, people who dreamed of freeing themselves from the shackles of wage slavery only to discover they brave new world they fought so hard to enter has no interest in them.
What are they to do? Drag themselves back to wage slavery? Throw themselves off a very high stack of books?
If these unfortunates seek any consolation it must be that they have at least helped secure paid employment for a small army of people who previously found themselves in a similar position to the current wretches – I speak of course of that growing band of author academics running the mushrooming creative writing courses. They seem to be doing alright.
Peter Mortimer is the founder / editor of IRON Press.
]]>a guest blog post by Cherry Potts
I’m standing in a photographer’s studio juggling a slightly too big pile of books and a picture of myself aged about seven. I’ve been here a while. The books have been splayed into a fan across my chest, piled on my head, held out earnestly like Oliver Twist asking for more, currently they are in the crook of my arm and I am asking Tom who else will be in his Outcome project. He is reeling off celebrities, mostly male, mostly white; and actually mostly young(ish), I am thinking who else I know who would meet his criteria. Mostly writers, that would make for a not terribly entertaining collection of pictures, given we are supposed to be embodying our professions or hobbies. So, why, the childhood photograph?
Outcome is Tom Dingley’s brain child, and at this point is entirely based online. His brilliantly simple idea is to take pictures of LGBT people with pictures of themselves as children to show how far they’ve come. The project is aimed at young people questioning their sexuality and the purpose is to show that they is, very emphatically, life after coming out.
What about physical exhibitions? I ask. We talk about galleries, and somewhere in the back of my mind, while Tom tries to get me to look like I enjoy having my photograph taken an idea forms, to be swiftly dismissed. What about a book?
Arachne is a very small outfit – basically me, and a couple of friends I call on for proofing and to help at events, and my long-suffering wife Alix, who does front of house when I don’t feel up to it, and reads in for shy authors. We’ve only ever published text based books, but I spend a lot of time thinking about cover designs, and we have had an art exhibition… no we can’t; we can’t afford the outlay for full colour – it’s too high a risk.
I talk to our printer. He doesn’t do colour. That settles it. But then, he knows someone who could… the samples are awful. No we aren’t doing it. I talk paper stock with a number of other printers. They obviously think I’m mad, and a couple of quotes send me reeling in shock.
I talk to some more printers, I hold paper stock over pictures and discard sample after sample. Can we really afford this?
But then, it’s no good, I email Tom.
We talk to an art college about exhibition space, for the launch they can’t help, but we suddenly realise we might not have to pay for exhibition space- not everywhere at least, and that the show should go on the road.
So, if we do this book, I say to Tom, as we wait for the bus, wondering where in the UK to take the exhibition, we need lots more pictures and we have to sort out the gender imbalance, and the race imbalance, and the age imbalance, and where are the transpeople?
We’ll have to crowdfund, I say, as the 68 pulls up Are you up for helping? We’ve done a crowdfund before, twice. The first time we didn’t get the money, the second time we did, just. So I’m used to the process. I MAKE Tom speak on camera, he hates it. We set up the crowd fund. Money starts coming in. A LOT of money starts coming in – Do you think this guy hit an extra zero by accident? We email each other at 6 one morning, but no, we have our target in a matter of days. Do I think this book might sell? Do I!
We raise more than twice what we need, and start talking about the travelling exhibition. Tom hits the targets I gave him for numbers of photos, and we spend hours poring over little prints on my table, working out who goes in and who doesn’t, and the order of the pictures. HOURS!
We go to look at the gallery at University of Greenwich, and they remember Tom who did his degree there. It becomes clear they are very keen to have the launch at the gallery. We have lots of meetings, while I stave off the worst throat infection I’ve had for years, and try to say as little as possible. We agree an astonishingly detailed and exciting programme of events. Now we just need those books.
Steep Learning Curve – a phrase that was invented with me in mind. I know how to typeset a book, of course I do… but a photographic book? I’m back to first principles: different page layouts, no page numbers, working out the bleed actually matters! Some of the pictures don’t readily fit the format, to my horror stray elements repeat themselves on the opposite page, people’s fingertips go missing, and emails are sent saying strange things like – does the original file have more leg?
It takes several goes to get it right, and the printers do me a sample on the paper I’ve asked for, which looks – alright. I chase Tom for files of higher Resolution, and then we finally send the files – and no, it still isn’t right when we get the proofs. Kind printer talks me through what is going wrong and I resend the files trembling with anxiety. We are now a week behind schedule.
Alix and I go on holiday. I need that holiday! The books are due for delivery the week of our return. Then, a phone call. How many did I need right away? Because there is a stray intermittent fault – a mark on random pages, and they are doing a 100% check, but can only guarantee to deliver a proportion by the due date. We are now going to be two weeks behind schedule, possibly 3, and the launch has to be when we’ve planned it:, the University are sorted, rooms are booked, lighting effects agreed, miles of rainbow ribbon purchased… and anyway, it coincides with International Coming Out Day.
The advance copies for reviewers and crowd funders and the launch arrive and … It’s gorgeous. I hardly dared hope they would look this good.
Will the bulk arrive at the distributors in time? Will the distributors get them out to Waterstones in Greenwich who are stocking for the duration of the exhibition?
We’ll have to wait and see!
OUTCOME: LGBT portraits by Tom Dingley is published by Arachne Press.
The exhibition is at The Heritage Gallery, University of Greenwich, Old Naval College, Park Row, SE10 9LS 10-14th October 10am-5pm except Monday 10th 10am-4pm http://alumni.gre.ac.uk/outcome/
]]>
By Peter Mortimer, editor at IRON Press
]]>I first discovered the poems of Ernest Noyes Brookings in the late 1980s as I began reading the Duplex Planet, an American zine that recorded the thoughts and conversations of the residents of a nursing home in Massachusetts. Brookings had started to write his poems only when at the home, in his eighties, and having never before had any interest in poetry, as far as we know. The subject matter for his poems was whatever was suggested to him by David Greenberger, the activities director at the home (and editor of the Duplex Planet). This could be a dead dog, eggs, the letter P, Vermont in Winter … the poems are playful, spontaneous, very simple and yet very strange. It was the strangeness I liked most.
20 years later I included a Brookings verse as an epigraph in my book of haiku, Our Sweet Little Time. A friend and colleague, Mike Fell, showed an interest in Brookings’s poetry, and we contacted David Greenberger (the administrator of his estate since Brookings’s death in 1989) about collecting the poems in book form for the first time. David energetically supported the enterprise from the start, and so began what became the first Boatwhistle book, The Golden Rule: Collected Poems of Ernest Noyes Brookings.
Simply locating copies of all the poems was a huge undertaking, and it took several years before we were close to having a first proof of a book. In the meantime a second Boatwhistle project began: a book of haiku unlike any that had come before, with twelve writers each contributing a month’s worth of new haiku to form a full calendar year of haiku, one per day. What was unusual was the selection of writers: half of them were very experienced haiku poets, such as George Swede, Michael Dylan Welch and Matthew Paul, while the other six had never (or almost never) written a haiku previously. In the latter category were the poets Hugo Williams, Sally Read and Matthew Welton, and the singer-songwriter Momus. Then resulting haiku were a fascinating mixture of styles and approaches, with those writers who were new to haiku perhaps bringing a freshness to the form and not feeling so restricted by some of the conventions that have become established in the haiku community.
The resulting book was Off the Beaten Track: A Year in Haiku. In 2015 Boatwhistle was awarded an Arts Council grant to commission original illustrations by twelve contemporary artists for each of the months in the book, and also to support the launch of both of these first two Boatwhistle titles, which were published this month. Initial responses to the two books have been hugely encouraging.
And where do we go from here? Boatwhistle’s only aim is to produce 'singular books for singular readers'. That does not necessarily mean poetry – we may produce works of prose fiction, or environmental science, or biography, mathematics, ornithology …
It's clear that we can look forward to many great things from Boatwhistle so don't miss out on being one of the first to order their books on our website now.
Our Sweet Little Time was published by Iron Press in 2009.
]]>I’m also not keen on individuals’ unattributed gushing quotes on the front or back cover.
Such quotes are often from the author’s mates, rarely spontaneous (the commercial publishing field has people who trawl round persuading people to supply the same) and are often agreed to even before the person quoting has read the material. Of course they feed the ego of that same person who gets his or her name on the cover of a new book without having to write it!
But for IRON Press, only quotes from credited reviews are allowed. And for small presses of course, such reviews are few and far between. These tend to come too late to be used in publication, unless there’s a reprint (we wish), so most of our books contain no cover quotes at all.
Another dislike is book prices of £5.99p, £6.99p or the like. Do publishers really believe the reading public is stupid enough to see a price of £5.99p and think, “Oh good! A book for only £5!” Treat your readers with the respect they deserve. Round the price up.
My major quirky dislike concerns a different matter. It is the deep hostility I feel towards the epithet award-winning. I have only to see or hear these two words preceding an author’s name to break out in to a rash of contagious spots consisting of various colours and hues.
Authors who employ award-winning in their biog notes obviously have a deep desire to impress their audiences. OK, so all authors have this same desire, otherwise they wouldn’t write. But that small consideration apart, the use of award-winning seems a slightly desperate attempt to gain often unwarranted credibility.
If you’ve won an award of some real stature, fine – say so. Name it. But arts awards are scattered far and wide these days and it is a pretty poor professional author who cannot lay claim to have been given some wretched award or other. I know I have.
The use of the description award-winning suggests great showers of accolades descending on the author from Olympian heights to the accompaniment of sustained and tumultuous applause from the populace at large.. The fact it could refer to the Grindthorpe & District Leek Growers Annual Short Story Award 1984 (two entries) or the East Grinstead Butchers Association Award for the Best Traditional Poem about a Sausage (one entry) is neither here nor there.
Though in fact it’s very much here. Can I suggest that our national language supremo, when appointed, uses his or her dictatorial powers to ban this vague term from all biog notes, book cover notes or other self-penned author descriptions?
Much better to be self-deferential when describing yourself. People will warm to you. Thus, ‘his books have been received mainly by a thunderous silence’ suggests to me a much more interesting writer than one sticking in the accursed epithet mentioned above.
I find an immediate rapport with a author describing herself thus; ‘her books have rarely received much critical acclaim and seem unlikely to start doing now’ than some boasting braggart throwing around the phrase award-winning.
I once read an author’s biog notes that were neither hyperbolic nor deferential but had a strange fascination. I quote: He is constantly startled by the grey rose.
Now there’s someone worth more than a cursory look – award winning or not.
By Peter Mortimer, editor at IRON Press
]]>
Having been a small press editor for more than forty years, I find myself reclining on the 1950s Dan Dare chaise longue, musing on the peculiarities of the calling.
Let us examine the ten immediate advantages and drawbacks.
1) No salary. An individual is strangely freed from those usual pressures as to whether to build a house extension or take a three month holiday swanning around Mesopotoamia, even if such a place still existed. Having no salary also means you are not anxiously waiting for that pay cheque to go into the bank. There isn’t one. A cheque that is, not a bank. Alas, there are still many of the latter.
2) Loathing or sycophancy. Here lie the two extremes of the reactions from those few members of the public who do not treat you with a highly active indifference. There are certain authors who regard me with such contempt for not having published their life’s work (or even a haiku) that should I walk into the same room as they occupy, they are attacked by a severe case of projectile vomiting. Others believe sycophancy is the way and indulge in grovelling obsequiousness. This feeds my ego but does little to increase their chances of being published. Despite being given to the usual human flaws and limitations, one of my few proud claims in those 42 years is that no writer has been published by IRON Press unless thus merited by the quality of their work.
Most good writers, I should stress, occupy neither of the above two polarities.
3) On the Job. Often I envy those people who come home from a regular job and shut the door against the world. No, no, that’s not true at all. Let’s say I am curious about such a species. My own world of work seeps into every pore of my world of leisure, so that now I have no idea what is the difference between the two. IRON Press and the world of writing long since occupied every corner of this house. 2am phone calls from authors on the brink of suicide are not unknown. Usually I can persuade them out of it, especially if I’m still waiting for their completed manuscript.
4) Annual holidays. I heard someone mention these two words the other day. Any idea what they mean?
6) Despair. A regular visitor. You spend a year working on an author’s poems or stories, both parties nurturing them towards readiness. A further three months is occupied liaising with the book and cover designer, Finally the book goes to the printers and emerges blinking into the light – always a small miracle of a moment. Three months later sales total four, and you reach for the bottle of pills. Luckily you don’t have any pills so you go for a consolation pint instead.
7) Injustice. This is ubiquitous and mainly to be ignored when working as a small press editor. If there were even the slightest sense of justice, no-one would be publicising those ghost-written tedious autobiographies of minor untalented celebs snapped up by the chat shows at the expense of the neglected works of genius from your own imprint. Nor would they be promoting in the broadsheets those obscure unreadable tomes reviewed by the authors’ literary chums gravitating in the same small circle of the London literati. It was ever thus, so just get on with your own efforts. What do you want – a knighthood? Exactly!
8) Kindle books. Basically, they’re crap. They leave most real publishers cold and people are getting fed up already.
9) Authors. You don’t get to meet all of the ones you publish, but quite a few. Is there any more maddening, colourful, self-centered, brilliant, paranoid, funny, impractical,
imaginative, insecure, driven, impossible species on the planet? Some become good friends. Even lovers. Imagine your life without them. Exactly!
10) Moving house. Given the extent to which your small publishing activities have taken total possession of your house, this is clearly impossible. Thus you are freed from all the nonsense of property ladders or worrying about the value of your home.
Ten points to consider then. Fancy the job of small press editor? Fine. There’s no entry qualification, no interview, no career ladder, no organised structure. You just wake one morning and decide to do it. Good luck!
Peter Mortimer - Editor, IRON Press
]]>Here's the story: In 1969 the pioneering Tony Ward had a vision. One which would inevitably lead to the future of Arc Publications. Since then we've been placing the jigsaw together – demonstrating decades of international nourishment for our readers.
We've published over 350 titles and worked with over 500 authors and translators. Our list includes poets from Russia, India, Estonia, Sri Lanka and many other continental locations. We might be a small, independent press, but the only limit we're interested in is possibility. Over the years we've published a range of potent voices featuring in Arc's International Series, Voices Beyond Europe and most recently our brand new Pamphlet Series.
At Arc Publications, we believe that translation is the best currency for keeping language alive. That's one reason why seventy percent of our books are poetry in translation. This means that we can provide our readers with a compass – one which allows them to navigate from continent to continent simply by buying one of Arc's bilingual editions. We've also launched a new Translators Forum and a new site for live poetry – Arc Sessions. Yes, the last few months have been more than exciting. It's a been a real thrill to provide our audience with more poetry, more debate, and more discussion.
Our aim is to present the most renowned international poets' around. Those who can help us expand our perspective and allow us to examine the poetry of a nation and the cultural threads of human history. We can move past the common-place and the common-experience making room for new systems of thought.
You can find out more about Arc Publications on our website:
http://www.arcpublications.co.uk/
Take a look at Arc's Translators' forum at:
http://forum.arcpublications.co.uk/
New films by our International poets can be found at Arc Sessions:
]]>
I was a young dance student when I first heard of the choreographer, Kurt Jooss, and saw his iconic ballet, The Green Table. It was a pirated video copy in poor quality black and white, but even so I was struck by the extraordinary opening scene. Twelve Gentlemen in Black sit around a conference table. Are they diplomats, politicians, bureaucrats? The opening piano chords sound, and they gesticulate, preen, bow, shake fists – the tension mounts, and then they back off again, circling round each other in a predatory fashion, until finally they draw pistols, gun shots sound, and the figure of Death appears. It’s a classic work of German Expressionism, and won a prestigious choreography prize in 1932. Then in 1933, Hitler came to power, and demanded the Jewish company composer, Fritz Cohen, was dismissed. Jooss refused, and the company had to flee Germany overnight.
A few years later I moved to Amsterdam to continue my dance training. On my many walks through the city I was aware of a long shadow of Nazi occupation, even though it was by then the early 80s. One day I will write a novel set here, I decided. And so the seeds of The Green Table were sown.
Almost thirty years later I attended an Arvon Course at Lumb Bank – writing fiction for young adults – led by Celia Rees and the late Jan Mark. It was there that I first met Jan Fortune, who had not yet launched Cinnamon Press. Our task that week was to begin a new piece of work. I remember sitting in a writing hut in the garden, overlooking the steep wooded valley and talking to Celia about Amsterdam and the Nazi occupation, and how I wanted to write something about a young girl who was determined to dance. As I began to write, I remembered Hilde Holger, a Viennese Jewish dancer I trained with briefly in a basement in Camden Town. She was a very old lady, fiery and passionate, who had survived, and danced, despite the daily threat of being discovered by the Nazis. I heard her voice shouting at us as she banged her tamba, and the first scene wrote itself. On the final night I read out the first pages of The Green Table to the rest of the group.
I loved the period of intense research that followed – Dutch history, dance history, a visit to the Resistance Museum and Theatre Museum, translation of Dutch newspapers, and discoveries about the moral struggles of Dutch medics during the occupation. Slowly the characters emerged, and a narrative took shape.
The Green Table as a book for teenagers never quite made it. Two agents tried to sell it – including the wonderful Pam Royds, children’s fiction editor with Andre Deutsch for many years, who persuaded me to redraft a version with a stronger heroine, and call it Dance for Your Life – which I wasn’t keen on. At least two editors were enthusiastic, and one accepted it, but it was turned down by the marketing departments. It was never going to make big money. So in the end I abandoned it for three years and went off to do an MA.
But I could never quite let go. I had the notion that if I were to redraft it as novel for adults there would be scope to go into greater depth with the material. At this point I reconnected with Jan Fortune when she published one of my short stories. She’d loved the opening pages of The Green Table, heard all those years earlier at Lumb Bank, and I was delighted when she agreed to mentor me, and subsequently agreed to publish the re-worked version in 2015. What I hadn’t bargained for was the immense struggle involved, how much material from the original I had to eliminate, and how often the early work hindered the development and deepening of my characters. It came together, finally, when I spent a week alone last August, house and cat-sitting for Jan in Wales – something like solving an intricate puzzle, I could at last see the form, the shape of it.
Writing The Green Table has been a fulfilling and absorbing task, and has given me much joy. The act of writing, though personal, seems at times to reach far beyond the personal. It feels then like soul work. I have loved the journey, and am immensely grateful to Jan for believing in my work from the start.
To learn more about Tricia's work you can visit her website.
You can buy The Green Table here.
]]>
A blog for Inpress? Why not? Traditionally, I’ve done this kind of writing for various print organs as a columnist. It’s something I’ve always loved doing. Writing a regular weekly column puts a frame round your life and helps you make sense of it - so it’s as much for my own benefit as that of the reader. Yet print publications are now in such a parlous state, that freelance columnists are becoming history. Denied a print column outlet, I fret around the house. Meantime, I find myself writing for various blog sites. Why does it not feel the same? Why is the sense of anticipation more muted?
A blog going online brings a different sensation to a hard copy newspaper or mag rolling off the presses on one set day. A blog is wonderfully democratic – why, anyone can write a blog and put it up! But that very process of democracy weakens it. There is no editor, no selection, no particular day of publication, no sense of communality of readership. A blog just sits there forever, rather than being subject to the bittersweet ephemera of a newspaper, - a temporary immediacy, then gone.
My suspicion is that news of the odd blog going viral disguises the millions of others that are barely noticed. Writing blogs does not make my pulse race.
Making the pulse race is also one reason for my publishing books. A book is a work of art. This is independent of the writing style or the author’s literary reputation. The creative journey any writer makes from basic idea to finished manuscript is a fascinating one.
Only less slightly fascinating is the journey that manuscript then undergoes to be transformed into a book; the choice of fonts, the page size, the style, the commissioning of the cover, the dummy, the proofs, weight and texture of the paper, the binding, a whole load of practical and aesthetic decisions leading up to that one moment when the first copies are delivered from the printers.
After 42 years of editing IRON Press, opening that box is still a breathless moment; part terror, part delicious anticipation. Will the book look as planned? Is it properly trimmed? Are there some atrocious misprints? Is the registration correct? Are the cover colours true? Is the binding secure? Is it back to front?
I lovingly handle, open, fondle and caress the book. Sometimes I can smell the print. I am the midwife, proud of the newly born baby. During the next few days I return to it every half hour. I gaze upon it proudly. I am possessive of this book, even though it is not written by me, I have with it a unique relationship. I send the book out into the world nervous as to the reaction. Often there is no reaction. I learn to live with such indifference yet seethe at the injustice.
And as blogs are to hard print, so is Kindle to the physical book. Kindle. What a wonderful invention. I suppose. Yet my reaction to Kindle is similar to that towards blogs. Kindle does not make my pulse race. A book that is not really a book. Several of my own books are available on Kindle. Several IRON Press books, thanks to Inpress, are also now available on Kindle. The list grows. I wish them all luck. I have never been stirred to look at a single one of them.
It is, dear reader, to do with the soul. For me, blogs and Kindle however necessary and pioneering, however technologically exciting and liberating, have no soul. And the soul is something that is beyond technology. Poor me.
Peter Mortimer – Editor, IRON Press
]]>Ten years ago, Cinnamon Press began with a small magazine, Coffee House Poetry, with under a hundred subscribers. Since then we’ve published over 250 titles, worked with over 500 authors in some 20 countries and our books have been nominated for and won major awards, including Wales Book of the Year, The Forward Prize for best first collection and the Scottish Arts Council Best First Book of the Year. From the outset, Cinnamon set out to be an innovative publisher, publishing fiction, poetry and selective non-fiction books that have something to say and that don’t fit more mainstream houses. The books cover a wide range of poetry and prose styles, but always have a distinctive and compelling voice, whether it’s the award winning poetry of T S Eliot-prize winner, Philip Gross or the lyrical, mesmeric prose of Adam Craig’s extraordinary novel, Vitus Dreams. Our list includes books from Wales, Scotland and England and also titles from Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, America, France, Italy, China and many other places.
In addition to publishing around 25 titles a year, plus pamphlets and our new Liquorice Fish Books imprint, which features inventive and experimental writing, we also have a popular series of writing competitions and courses, plus a successful mentoring scheme. In short, we’re a small, family-run independent press with a love of inventive writing and a passion for literary activism.
Getting to the milestone of ten years feels like a huge achievement. There have been several periods when we didn’t think we’d make it this far. In 2012 we found ourselves without any grant funding and only survived a rough six months due to the generosity and ingenuity of our supporters and authors. Two authors set up ‘Cinnamon Friends’ as a way of raising some income; others gave donations or offered time to edit or help with mentoring; others helped us to redesign our competitions. This year we had a major attack on the website with hacking that made the site unfeasible to retain, but once again we were rescued – this time by the generosity and talent of web designer, Sarah Willans, who runs ZipFish. Life remains precarious – getting books into the world is always a challenge for independent presses, but we’re thrilled to be able to say, after ten years ‘We’re still here’ and we have lots of exciting plans for the next decade.
The books published in our tenth anniversary year represent the best crop we’ve ever had. They are a diverse range, but what unites them are authors with distinctive voices who are willing to take risks with their writing. Adam Craig’s Vitus Dreams is a novel, but also uses poetry techniques – highly lyrical, often concrete; it’s both narrative and experiment and stands out for being inventive. Ian Gregson’s novel, The Crocodile Princess, is full of wit and fresh thinking – a slightly alternative world in which Peter Cook suffers of crisis of comedy and becomes a diplomat in Cambodia during the Cold War; with brilliant effect. Meet Me There is a distillation of some of the best writing from Cinnamon Press on the theme of place – ten authors showcasing their writing, discussing literary process and offering suggestions for writers wanting to develop their craft; a real insight into how writing works. Vanessa Gebbie’s Ed’s Wife [and other creatures] uses extraordinary micro-fictions combined with gorgeous illustrations from Lynn Roberts to explore the many facets of a relationship, sometimes surreal, always captivating. Laura Seymour’s The Shark Cage won our poetry collection competition with a series of poems that constantly surprise; the language is supple, the images are startling, there is humour and darkness, mischief and light. And these are just five of the offerings from this year’s celebratory list.
Our relationship with authors is really important to us and the courses and mentoring scheme help us to develop relationships with emerging writers or more experienced writers doing something new. We live in a fast world, but writing takes time and taking time out from busy lives to nurture the writing with a course or giving serious attention to a writing project over a whole year with supportive feedback and development can make all the difference. And the publication rate of our mentored students is over 70%.
For the future our stress will remain on inventive writing from authors who find fresh ways to communicate. We have some exciting new projects including Liquorice Fish’s first novella set in Beirut, Omar Sabbagh’s Via Negativa and a several compelling novels for 2016. We are also putting a lot more energy into our design with wonderful new covers from Adam Craig.
Throughout this year we’ve had launches with an extra something and published books we’re more proud of than ever. We’ve also launched extra-special offers throughout the year so that we now have ten offers to celebrate ten years. You can catch up with us at this year’s Free Verse Book Fair in London at Conway Hall on September 26 and at events around the country in the autumn, but our big celebration will be the 10th anniversary pop-up weekend in Northampton, at the beautiful NN Gallery from October 2 – 4. All the weekend events are free, we will have lots of special offers and giveaways and the café will be open.
You can find out more about Cinnamon Press on our website:
Take a look at our celebration special offers at:
You can also find details of our anniversary weekend and download the full programme here:
http://www.cinnamonpress.com/index.php/about-cinnamon-press/tenth-anniversary
]]>Reviewers, Reviews, News & Literary Festivals
Useful advice from Eleanor Mills, Editorial Director at The Sunday Times about approaching newspapers and magazines, and not necessarily going for the book pages which are inevitably chock full of big names. Apply the human angle (again! they are more interested in the author than the book) to a current news story and offer a relevant author to write or be interviewed. This has the advantage of including authors from the backlist, it doesn’t need to be limited to the authors of recent or forthcoming titles.
For a review send the book with a hand written letter to a specific person and tell them why you’ve chosen to send them it – if they’ve written about the subject or reviewed positively a book that you can relate it to etc.( I expect some of you are going yes, yes; at this point, but this information was manna to me!)
There was some disagreement over the value of print media reviews, with the booksellers saying they are incredibly useful, and the online reviewers saying don’t get stuck in the past, so do whatever you think will work for you! (I’ve been researching all the social media that people mentioned this morning and I have to admit to reaching my Don’t ****ing Care level in the process). For those of you with greater tolerance you might want to look at The Pool (dot com). How did I not know about BookTube?
Specifically Books and Quills was recommended as a possible place to try for articles that relate your books and authors to current events. I have to say after a swift glance at what came up at the top BookTube is a bit noisy, but if they are being noisy about my books, that’s fine by me. I learnt a lot about Pinterest, but found myself thinking that adding this to my already time consuming social media roster might be that spread-too-thin moment.
A useful point was not to put the same content on all the different media streams at the same time – apparently it annoys reviewers if they get the SAME message from different sources. Counter-intuitive?
Something I already knew about publishing – people are generous and don’t treat each other as competitors. Publicists were talking about promoting each other’s books, and running blogs that never mentioned the books or the company behind the blog but just talk nicely and topically not even always about books and authors at all. Behaving like journalists gets them noticed by other journalists.
(This is where the time thing comes in again ...)
And finally: pitching to literary festivals. Know who you are pitching to – who goes to the festival? Is your book/ author right for it? Think broadly - cross over to other publishers and suggest joint readings that match the zeitgeist. Tell them if your author is shy or needs a host or can hold their own in a row … Invite organisers to your events.
You see, it really is all about the author!
Many thanks to Cherry for taking the time to write about what she learned (and what knowledge she had reconfirmed) by being our winning delegate for the Bookseller conference. You can read Part I here and Part II here. Also a number of slide presentations from the conference are available here.
If you have an idea for an article about publishing for the Inpress blog, please do get in contact with us.
]]>
Brands
Natalie Ramm who has been working with Pushkin Press talking the power of brand partnerships impressed me. She had found a number of high profile brand partners for them, and for the price of quite a lot of free books, the cost of a pop-up shop, and her own (I’m sure not inconsiderable) fee, had gained huge reach and recognition, and made the money back in book sales. That’s the sort of publicist I want!
Author-led marketing: remember in my first post I said that everyone is more interested in the author than the book? Getting the author involved as much as possible was the theme of the day, whether by persuading them onto social media, channelling them to get an authentic voice for your marketing message, getting them out on book crawls, or being aware of how you as the publisher can work to create the author as a brand. Conversely make sure the author knows how you are pitching them.
In the final post of this series, next week, Cherry will be reporting back on review coverage and reviewers. Tune In then, because it’s a goodie ... Meanwhile a number of useful slide decks from some of the presentations made at the Bookseller's Marketing & Publicity Conference are available for download here.
]]>So — a hot day on the South Bank with the Bookseller’s finest. I was doubtful how much benefit I would get from the conference as a one woman outfit and found myself laughing nostalgically at the oft mentioned ‟learning to work together across departments” from those working in the larger publishing houses. I was not alone in laughing at £4k being described as ‟a tiny budget for marketing a single book”. And this was where my doubts sprang from: my marketing budget per book is less than £100! But in fact this was one of those rare events where I didn’t feel at any point that my time was being wasted.
]]>So — a hot day on the South Bank with the Bookseller’s finest. I was doubtful how much benefit I would get from the conference as a one woman outfit and found myself laughing nostalgically at the oft mentioned ‟learning to work together across departments” from those working in the larger publishing houses. I was not alone in laughing at £4k being described as ‟a tiny budget for marketing a single book”. And this was where my doubts sprang from: my marketing budget per book is less than £100! But in fact this was one of those rare events where I didn’t feel at any point that my time was being wasted.
The phrase of the day was Cut through used as a noun. What the @**! Does that mean?
However there were some useful tips to be had for those of us with no money at all, and some useful reminders of things I knew already but had shelved in the ‘later’ bit of my brain, plus some reassurance that some of the more outré strategies I use, other people think might actually work!
So here is my take on what there was on offer for the likes of me.
There were broadly four official themes: The Reader; The Brand; The Reviewers; Stress! (which I am ignoring in my blogposts, you all know how that works).
And the unofficial ones, that time replaces money in marketing as a constant budgetary balancing act, (one event was said to have cost £150 – oh, and 8 people full time for 8 weeks, and then a full weekend — so that’s kind of nearer £30k, isn’t it?). And that everyone from literary festivals to reviewers (including the readers??) is more interested in the author than the book.
Unsurprisingly with so many speakers there were a lot of points that were repeated, and many that were contradicted.
The Reader:
There was a lot on paying attention to the ultimate consumer (the human being behind the number) who actually reads the book: understanding your audience and what they want (and then surprising them), and taking your marketing to where that audience will see it, and earning their attention, by inviting collaboration and feedback, and sharing both content and covers with either focus groups (‘members’) or anyone who is sufficiently interested. When feedback is negative get your fans to champion for you; and use the negatives, (‘your great aunt would hate this book’ kind of thing).
The key message was not to spread yourself too thin: choose a couple of routes that will reach the people you want to reach, and get on with it, both in terms of direct marketing and creating communities around genres through events. 90% of social media users ‘lurk’ and don’t interact. (I am a self-confessed social media lurker, and actually, I suspect readers may skew this percentage even further by their very nature.)
The ‘who’ of reaching out to your potential audience was neatly identified by Ciaran Brennan, who has a niche product and a (large) niche market of mainly male 14-35 year-old football nerds (his words), where more communication isn’t going to bring in more people, but can get those already engaged advocating for you.
Reader experience (of the actual book). Marginal gain: small things that make a big difference – answer the questions people have – what does the author look like (a photo) – who are they (an entertaining bio). Share information about why is the cover as it is, what decisions were made about design etc.. Endpapers/ flaps etc, make them work for the reader with additional snippets of useful info … and making sure all the extras make it into the ebook.
In Part 2 of this round-up, on Friday, Cherry will be summarising what was said about Brands.
]]>