OK, you know what my feelings are on the first of these - I believe so strongly that writing is for readers it's the tag-line of the Year Zero website.
But the converse is also true. OK, tired point. Old point. But nonetheless an important one - and, of course, timely as the end of the year approaches. I've not read as much as I should this year -I've been so busy with SO many things. Or rather what I have been reading is some wonderful stuff, but contemporary stuff - bang on contemporary, as in works in progress. The highlights, for me, having last year discovered Glimpses of a Floating World and Benny Platonov, in terms of novels were undoubtedly Brown Trash, Sabina England's brutal breath-taking masterpiece of suburban dystopia; and Daisy Anne Gree's Babylon, a bone-chilling modern morality tale.
In 2010 though, I want to spend more time reading some older books. I know my writing needs it.
Why is reading important for writers? Well, it's part of mastering your craft for one - how can you synthesise what's gone before and build onit if you don't KNOW what's gone before; it's inspiring - it gives you ideas, shows you technical tricks you hadn't thought of (my discovery of 2008 was the way Murakami uses dialogue tags and metaphor/simile instead of adjectives; of 2009 was as simple - but devastatingly effective - as the way Brett Easton Ellis uses the word "and"); third, and most of all - reading is just great.
Here's a list of what's on my definite TBR pile in 2010 - literally - there's no clever order to this - I have them physically lined up in front of me:
Inez - Carlos Fuetes
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Generation X - Doug Coupland (giving him a second chance after hating Girlfriend in a Coma)
37.2 le matin - Philippe Djiann
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
What I Loved - Siri Hutstvedt
A Million Little Pieces - james Frey
Atmospheric Disturbances - Rivka Galchen
2666 - Roberto Bolano
All of Proust
and not yet on my physical shelf:
Sin - Josephine Hart (can't find it anywhere!)
the new Martell and Mitchell
Journals of Anais Nin
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The rest of my plans for 2010 will follow later but, I'm sure you can guess, they'll be centred around raising the profile of Year Zero to the point where we start getting noticed in the mainstream media, mainly through devoting myself to making the 13 Shadows tour a blinding triumph. But this is the bones of my reading list. There will be more - anyone care to add?
Most important, what are the ten books you feel you HAVE to read in 2010?
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Collective Appeal: The Book View Cafe
We might think we're quite cool at Year Zero but The Book View Cafe is not just the best known writers' collective on the planet, it's fast approaching Sub Zero. So I was absolutely stoked when Sue Lange agreed to speak to me about the SF collective that's causing such a stir.
You can find Sue Lange at the Book View Cafe (with links to ebooks and free stuff) as well as on her personal webpage and blog.
Her two novels, Tritcheon Hash, and We, Robots are availble from Amazon
Here's what Sue had to say:
1. How do you decide on a name when there are so many of you? How did BVC come about as a name?
Funny you should ask. The name was, in fact, the very first thing we haggled over. We started out as "Online Bookshelf." We decided it was too boring. Then we moved on to "Reads" something or other. Then we had everybody list possibilities. We sifted through probably a hundred names. We had arguments over what it was we wanted to get across. We were an all-girl entity back then and the only thing we agreed on immediately was that we didn't want the site to be pink and girly so we had to come up with something gender generic. We decided we wanted to go with neutral colors for the site and coffee motifs go well with that. Coffee and books go together almost as well as coffee and cigarets so everything came together quickly once somebody mentioned caffeine.
2. Imagine BVC was a real cafe. Tell me about the decor
It's relaxing, yet moody. A great place to intellectualize or veg out. You stop in for a cappuchino and stay for a while. Stay all night, hell, we don't care. Patrons sit in beat up leather sofas interspersed with airport furniture. We're very eclectic and casual in our taste. Every sofa has a stack of well worn magazines with titles running the gamut from The Economist to Interview to Bride's to Scientific American. Every table has a set-up that includes stir sticks, a paper napkin dispenser, stack of book marks, and used Kindle Oberons. The ones in the back include Turkish hashpipe hookahs. Our patrons tend to be health nuts so the pipes rarely get used, but they're there if you need them.
The floor is a black and white checkerboard overlain with huge Keith Haring figures.
The walls are lined with bookshelves. Unabridged dictionaries lay open on stands here and there about the room for that atavistic feel. Free Wifi fills the air as does music from ACDC played at barely perceptible levels. We don't like to cover the sound of the steam from the machines.
The patrons are the best decor any cafe could wish for. They are all the characters in the books we write: aliens, tortured souls, lumbering giants, homunculi, succubi, vampires, bats, rats, cats, unfaithful spouses, damaged adults, disaffected teens, losers, winners, sidewinders, and rascals. Once in a while a protagonist shows up. That's when ACDC gets cranked to full vol.
3. Were you always 100% clear on where you wanted to take BVC or have you found yourselves changing direction as you went?
We have changed but we're also pretty much on track. We evaluate where we are every six months. Actually I think we do that moment to moment, but we do take a vote every six months. on whether or not we want to keep going. When we started we wanted to see if we could figure out what the big deal with Internet publishing and ebooks was. We mostly wanted to figure out how to get our out of print stuff back into the public's hands. After we started growing and saw that we could in fact attract readers to our site and our work, we started to talk about charging money. That was a few months ago. Once we saw that people would actually pay for our work, we started an actual press: Book View Press. We're now almost at the point of taking ourselves seriously. In other words we're wondering about legalities. We keep hoping to stave that off as long as possible, but we're starting to become an Entity, so there you go.
4. You're best known, I guess, for SF but on your site you have a wide variety of genres. How do you think of yourselves?
Each one of us thinks of us in terms of how they use the site, but collectively I think we do believe we're a part of the science fiction community. SF includes fantasy and even horror sometimes so that right there includes three genres. But we do want to branch out more. We're especially trying to come up with ways to serve the romance community. Apparently romance readers are the biggest consumers of ebooks. We have some romance, but I think we're going to try and get some more on the site.
5. The question I most want to ask, from my experiences of running a website for a collective of authors who seem to go collectively apathetic or hyperactive, is do you have a roster for posting?
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean a schedule? Yes, we do and we are very strict with it. Each author is assigned a day to post fiction and that's their day. We hope each author has something once a week. It's not a requirement, but it's something we look for. The blog is also scheduled. Usually a member blogs on the same day they post fiction but it's not a requirement.
6. How does your position within the BVC fit with the rest of your writing life?
My position is in media relations and it is very time consuming. Internet promotion can easily get out of hand. There are so many places to spend time. So much interesting stuff to become a part of. I have enough to do as an author, now I'm looking out for BVC. And opportunities for the collective are bigger and more interesting than for me as a writer so I tend to have more fun promoting BVC than my little old self. I make sure I write fiction at least an hour a day just for myself, but that's not really enough. So many ideas, so little time. And with multimedia, I want to try so many things but formatting sound files, video files, coordinating real life activities, it all takes so much time. I get the feeling I'm getting a lot done but it's probably all crappy. At least I'm having fun!
7. To what extent are you separate individuals who share a common passion for the dircet contact with treaders the internet brings, and to what extent do youwork together - albeit in your own ways - on common projects and questions? For example, when you put your anthologies together, do you find yourselves each contributing a story or do you talk and find that common themes of interest emerge that you explore as a group?
Each member has a different experience with BVC. Some are with us just to take advantage of the opportunities, but most of us contribute to the running of the joint in some way or another. And the various projects have different personnel working on them. The science fiction anthology probably wouldn't have any fantasy-only authors and vice versa. We do stuff out in the Internet too, like our twitter fic contests. Four or five us run a contest. The next contest might be a different set of four or five. Common interests do emerge, projects might come out of that. Once a project has run its course, though, we move on to the next thing, the next group of writers, the next promo opportunity.
8. Tell me about the decision to add an author blog.
That was with us from the beginning I believe. I don't remember a time when we didn't have that. Blogs were all the rage at the time. I guess they still are. We didn't want to have just a blog, even though our site is a bit blog-like what with the new content every day. But the blog was for audience participation because the site doesn't accommodate that.
9. What is the mix of back catalogue and new material on the site?
Most of it is back catalogue. However, one reason BVC exists is for the authors to be able to experiment with the new and weird. So experimental work does exist. I put my serialized novel, The Textile Planet, up because I wanted to try some stuff with multimedia. Nancy Jane Moore wanted to experiment with flash fiction. Almost all her stuff at the site is new and exclusive to BVC. Since we started Book View Press we've talked more about new titles. Our first brand new full length book will be launched next week. It's a steampunk anthology with about ten of us contributing stories to a shared world. It's called The Shadow Conspiracy: Tales from the Age of Steam.
10. What do you think a group like this gives readers that they weren't getting already?
We give readers that haven't read our out-of-print material a chance to do so. For instance, Vonda's "Dreamsnake" was a Hugo and Nebula award-winning book. That should still be available to the public but before BVC it wasn't. Now it is. Also we give readers a chance to sample our members' work for free. Each one of us has some free fiction at the site. And we're all previously published in the print world so it's not just a bag of rags at the site.
11. What do your agents/publishers REALLY think of you doing this?
I don't think any of the publishers are against us. We, as the BVC entity, don't have formal relationships with any of them, but none of the authors have reported any negativity on the part of their publishers or agents. Often when the group has a question about what we should be doing about this or that, one of us will contact his or her agent for advice. In the upheaving publishing industry, everyone is trying to figure this out. No one wants to be compared to the recording industry which seems to have missed out on new and possibly lucrative distribution channels. I think they're pushing for us, hoping we'll figure something out so they can then figure out how they'll fit into the picture. The publishers may be laughing at us for all I know, but they certainly haven't sent any negative vibes our way.
12. I want to ask somethig about the future of digital publishing but there are so many questions, most of which are hackneyed or trite, so how about: if there's a question you thinkpeople should be asking about ebooks but aren't, what is it?
When will the price of e-readers come down?
There's a larger question I wonder about too. What will happen with the supposed loss of gatekeepers and the subsequent flood of non-professional (i.e. unedited) writing available all over the place. Will things get sorted out and some other gatekeeping system be put in place so writers will have to eventually develop a polished approach before they get their stuff out there? I guess I'm really asking: what's going to happen with quality in writing?
You can find Sue Lange at the Book View Cafe (with links to ebooks and free stuff) as well as on her personal webpage and blog.
Her two novels, Tritcheon Hash, and We, Robots are availble from Amazon
Here's what Sue had to say:
1. How do you decide on a name when there are so many of you? How did BVC come about as a name?
Funny you should ask. The name was, in fact, the very first thing we haggled over. We started out as "Online Bookshelf." We decided it was too boring. Then we moved on to "Reads" something or other. Then we had everybody list possibilities. We sifted through probably a hundred names. We had arguments over what it was we wanted to get across. We were an all-girl entity back then and the only thing we agreed on immediately was that we didn't want the site to be pink and girly so we had to come up with something gender generic. We decided we wanted to go with neutral colors for the site and coffee motifs go well with that. Coffee and books go together almost as well as coffee and cigarets so everything came together quickly once somebody mentioned caffeine.
2. Imagine BVC was a real cafe. Tell me about the decor
It's relaxing, yet moody. A great place to intellectualize or veg out. You stop in for a cappuchino and stay for a while. Stay all night, hell, we don't care. Patrons sit in beat up leather sofas interspersed with airport furniture. We're very eclectic and casual in our taste. Every sofa has a stack of well worn magazines with titles running the gamut from The Economist to Interview to Bride's to Scientific American. Every table has a set-up that includes stir sticks, a paper napkin dispenser, stack of book marks, and used Kindle Oberons. The ones in the back include Turkish hashpipe hookahs. Our patrons tend to be health nuts so the pipes rarely get used, but they're there if you need them.
The floor is a black and white checkerboard overlain with huge Keith Haring figures.
The walls are lined with bookshelves. Unabridged dictionaries lay open on stands here and there about the room for that atavistic feel. Free Wifi fills the air as does music from ACDC played at barely perceptible levels. We don't like to cover the sound of the steam from the machines.
The patrons are the best decor any cafe could wish for. They are all the characters in the books we write: aliens, tortured souls, lumbering giants, homunculi, succubi, vampires, bats, rats, cats, unfaithful spouses, damaged adults, disaffected teens, losers, winners, sidewinders, and rascals. Once in a while a protagonist shows up. That's when ACDC gets cranked to full vol.
3. Were you always 100% clear on where you wanted to take BVC or have you found yourselves changing direction as you went?
We have changed but we're also pretty much on track. We evaluate where we are every six months. Actually I think we do that moment to moment, but we do take a vote every six months. on whether or not we want to keep going. When we started we wanted to see if we could figure out what the big deal with Internet publishing and ebooks was. We mostly wanted to figure out how to get our out of print stuff back into the public's hands. After we started growing and saw that we could in fact attract readers to our site and our work, we started to talk about charging money. That was a few months ago. Once we saw that people would actually pay for our work, we started an actual press: Book View Press. We're now almost at the point of taking ourselves seriously. In other words we're wondering about legalities. We keep hoping to stave that off as long as possible, but we're starting to become an Entity, so there you go.
4. You're best known, I guess, for SF but on your site you have a wide variety of genres. How do you think of yourselves?
Each one of us thinks of us in terms of how they use the site, but collectively I think we do believe we're a part of the science fiction community. SF includes fantasy and even horror sometimes so that right there includes three genres. But we do want to branch out more. We're especially trying to come up with ways to serve the romance community. Apparently romance readers are the biggest consumers of ebooks. We have some romance, but I think we're going to try and get some more on the site.
5. The question I most want to ask, from my experiences of running a website for a collective of authors who seem to go collectively apathetic or hyperactive, is do you have a roster for posting?
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean a schedule? Yes, we do and we are very strict with it. Each author is assigned a day to post fiction and that's their day. We hope each author has something once a week. It's not a requirement, but it's something we look for. The blog is also scheduled. Usually a member blogs on the same day they post fiction but it's not a requirement.
6. How does your position within the BVC fit with the rest of your writing life?
My position is in media relations and it is very time consuming. Internet promotion can easily get out of hand. There are so many places to spend time. So much interesting stuff to become a part of. I have enough to do as an author, now I'm looking out for BVC. And opportunities for the collective are bigger and more interesting than for me as a writer so I tend to have more fun promoting BVC than my little old self. I make sure I write fiction at least an hour a day just for myself, but that's not really enough. So many ideas, so little time. And with multimedia, I want to try so many things but formatting sound files, video files, coordinating real life activities, it all takes so much time. I get the feeling I'm getting a lot done but it's probably all crappy. At least I'm having fun!
7. To what extent are you separate individuals who share a common passion for the dircet contact with treaders the internet brings, and to what extent do youwork together - albeit in your own ways - on common projects and questions? For example, when you put your anthologies together, do you find yourselves each contributing a story or do you talk and find that common themes of interest emerge that you explore as a group?
Each member has a different experience with BVC. Some are with us just to take advantage of the opportunities, but most of us contribute to the running of the joint in some way or another. And the various projects have different personnel working on them. The science fiction anthology probably wouldn't have any fantasy-only authors and vice versa. We do stuff out in the Internet too, like our twitter fic contests. Four or five us run a contest. The next contest might be a different set of four or five. Common interests do emerge, projects might come out of that. Once a project has run its course, though, we move on to the next thing, the next group of writers, the next promo opportunity.
8. Tell me about the decision to add an author blog.
That was with us from the beginning I believe. I don't remember a time when we didn't have that. Blogs were all the rage at the time. I guess they still are. We didn't want to have just a blog, even though our site is a bit blog-like what with the new content every day. But the blog was for audience participation because the site doesn't accommodate that.
9. What is the mix of back catalogue and new material on the site?
Most of it is back catalogue. However, one reason BVC exists is for the authors to be able to experiment with the new and weird. So experimental work does exist. I put my serialized novel, The Textile Planet, up because I wanted to try some stuff with multimedia. Nancy Jane Moore wanted to experiment with flash fiction. Almost all her stuff at the site is new and exclusive to BVC. Since we started Book View Press we've talked more about new titles. Our first brand new full length book will be launched next week. It's a steampunk anthology with about ten of us contributing stories to a shared world. It's called The Shadow Conspiracy: Tales from the Age of Steam.
10. What do you think a group like this gives readers that they weren't getting already?
We give readers that haven't read our out-of-print material a chance to do so. For instance, Vonda's "Dreamsnake" was a Hugo and Nebula award-winning book. That should still be available to the public but before BVC it wasn't. Now it is. Also we give readers a chance to sample our members' work for free. Each one of us has some free fiction at the site. And we're all previously published in the print world so it's not just a bag of rags at the site.
11. What do your agents/publishers REALLY think of you doing this?
I don't think any of the publishers are against us. We, as the BVC entity, don't have formal relationships with any of them, but none of the authors have reported any negativity on the part of their publishers or agents. Often when the group has a question about what we should be doing about this or that, one of us will contact his or her agent for advice. In the upheaving publishing industry, everyone is trying to figure this out. No one wants to be compared to the recording industry which seems to have missed out on new and possibly lucrative distribution channels. I think they're pushing for us, hoping we'll figure something out so they can then figure out how they'll fit into the picture. The publishers may be laughing at us for all I know, but they certainly haven't sent any negative vibes our way.
12. I want to ask somethig about the future of digital publishing but there are so many questions, most of which are hackneyed or trite, so how about: if there's a question you thinkpeople should be asking about ebooks but aren't, what is it?
When will the price of e-readers come down?
There's a larger question I wonder about too. What will happen with the supposed loss of gatekeepers and the subsequent flood of non-professional (i.e. unedited) writing available all over the place. Will things get sorted out and some other gatekeeping system be put in place so writers will have to eventually develop a polished approach before they get their stuff out there? I guess I'm really asking: what's going to happen with quality in writing?
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
This is a "Thirteen Shadows Waiting for Sunrise" Teaser
Thank you to those of you who stopped by to see Sarah E Melville's stunning cover art for the half hour it was here. Information about the Thirteen Shadows book and tour will be available on Friday from the Year Zero website
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
To Hell With Boring: London's most exciting bookstore
It would seem to be a strange time to open a bookstore, but it's actually the perfect time for a well-focused independent store that knows exactly what it wants to do and be. Laurence Johns of To Hell With Publishing has clearly grasped this, and the result is To Hell With Books at 10 Woburn Walk in London, a store unashamedly specialising in quality literary fiction. Which makes it as perfect credit card candy as I can imagine.
To Hell With Publishing was set up in 2006 as a company that aimed to kick life into the independent publishing industry. It has since branched into To Hell With First Novels, doing what we strive to do at Year Zero, support new authors writing amazing literary fiction, and has even launched To Hell With Prizes, a great prize for unpublished novels (I'm not 100% sure I approve that it'f for agented authors but they already do more than anyone else for the unagented lit fic author). They love journals, chapbooks, novellas, and limited editions. Which are all reasons why I love them. I'll be heading down there to meet them and the shop in a week or so, and I'll let you know if it lives up to the considerable expectation, but I was lucky enough to be able to ask a few questions of the team behind To Hell With Books as they busied themselves for launch:
1. You are very clear on your website what you'll be stocking - signededitions, special editions, your own journals etc. What I'm less clear aboutis whether this is ALL you'l be stocking. In other words, how focused are you being?
We'll be stocking high end literary fiction and anything that we reallylove. We'll be very focused on our personal selection so that we can giveour customers the right recommendations. So we'll be extremely focused onquality.
2. I love the special edition idea. just how exclusive are we talking?Limited edition, hand-touched runs of 10, for example?
It'll vary between 10 - 200 in terms of copies. We've just published a limited edition of Kevin Cummin's Manchester (150 copies bound in light blue, light grey or dark grey cloth and boxed with a signed print in a perspex slipcase sealed with the glue used in Formula One racing, paddedand boxed in packing that's been tested by being sent to China and back - details on the website www.tohellwithpublishing.com) which should give you an indication of the kinds of things we do.
3. It's great that you are opening a shop like this when many are claiming
the industry is on its knees. What gives you the confidence to believe you can succeed?
Laurence has been an independent book seller all his life and I think we all feel that the time is right to start up a boutique bookshop.
4. I'm a huge fan of multi-arts and love the idea of combining books and art. And the literary crossover element is great, but will you have the same quality controls in place for the art as the books?
Quality is at the heart of what we do in Amuti and at To Hell with Publishing. Details on the art side of Laurence's interests and how properit all is are at amuti23.com.
5. You say you'll be sharing space with your publishing wing. Don't you worry that you'll get a buch of authors camping out in your shop?
We hope we will.
6. How do you intend to promote the shop? I imagine an exclusive club or newsletter like a fine wine appreciation society. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?
Yes - we'll be sending regular mail outs and organising regular events. It'll be a fine book appreciation society and pobably involve a certain amount of wine too.
7. You mention journals and you mention quality - from my literary fiction collective point of view, I have to ask: will you be stocking the things we can't get elsewhere - high quality chapbooks, novellas, poetry, even high quality special editions from self-publishers?
Yes - we're keen to support other independents as well as self-published work, just as long as its high quality. We'll be importing hard to find stuff from the US and rest of Europe too. I've heard you can buy poetry on Amazon these days, but it won't be as fun as buying it from us.
8. What's the space going to be like? I have two conflicting visions in my head - one is a gentleman's club with Hogarth prints and button-back chairs (I guess that's because of the address); the other is throw-covered sofas and graffiti walls like some of the cool arts places on Brick Lane. Is either of these close?
It'll be gentlemen's club meets Brick Lane. But without the throws - we're not really throw kind of people.
9. Do you intend to be a venue for people to come and hang out and talk literature? It's often struck me, as someone who's trying to create an online community that feels like the Left Bank of the 60s, that if literature's going to move forward we need places where anyone can come and swap ideas with anyone, where ideas can ferment (I imagine Malcolm MacLaren& Vivienne Westwood together on the King's Road). Do you see the shop as the physical home for a movement that encompasses your publishing wing and website, or is a shop just a place to sell books?
We're going to have a large dining room table in the middle of the roomfor everyone to sit round and chat and read at. Berets optional.
10. Because I'm asking everyone at the moment: are there any writers out there doing something exciting and new with the novel?
There are loads. We think our first novels novelist Grant Gillespie is possibly the finest example of one of them. We're publishing his book The Cuckoo Boy in April 2010. It's a quiet and beautiful story of an adopted child's disturbed and disturbing behaviour that succeeds in being funny too. And we love Richard Milward.
11. A question that sounds impertinent, but matters for setting the tone, let's play launch party balloon game. Suppose you knew they'd say yes: which of these makes it to your launch do:
- Nick Cave
- Nick Serota
- Beryl Bainbridge
- Kurt Cobain
- Jimmy Dean
- Dorothy Parker
- Max Clifford
- Brian Sewell
- Tracey Emin
- the skinhead who plasters haikus to the MacDonalds window on the corner
- Ian McEwan
- Salena Godden
- Jamie Oliver
We would rather the alive ones. And would quite enjoy seeing Brian Sewell and Nick Cave together.
To Hell With Publishing was set up in 2006 as a company that aimed to kick life into the independent publishing industry. It has since branched into To Hell With First Novels, doing what we strive to do at Year Zero, support new authors writing amazing literary fiction, and has even launched To Hell With Prizes, a great prize for unpublished novels (I'm not 100% sure I approve that it'f for agented authors but they already do more than anyone else for the unagented lit fic author). They love journals, chapbooks, novellas, and limited editions. Which are all reasons why I love them. I'll be heading down there to meet them and the shop in a week or so, and I'll let you know if it lives up to the considerable expectation, but I was lucky enough to be able to ask a few questions of the team behind To Hell With Books as they busied themselves for launch:
1. You are very clear on your website what you'll be stocking - signededitions, special editions, your own journals etc. What I'm less clear aboutis whether this is ALL you'l be stocking. In other words, how focused are you being?
We'll be stocking high end literary fiction and anything that we reallylove. We'll be very focused on our personal selection so that we can giveour customers the right recommendations. So we'll be extremely focused onquality.
2. I love the special edition idea. just how exclusive are we talking?Limited edition, hand-touched runs of 10, for example?
It'll vary between 10 - 200 in terms of copies. We've just published a limited edition of Kevin Cummin's Manchester (150 copies bound in light blue, light grey or dark grey cloth and boxed with a signed print in a perspex slipcase sealed with the glue used in Formula One racing, paddedand boxed in packing that's been tested by being sent to China and back - details on the website www.tohellwithpublishing.com) which should give you an indication of the kinds of things we do.
3. It's great that you are opening a shop like this when many are claiming
the industry is on its knees. What gives you the confidence to believe you can succeed?
Laurence has been an independent book seller all his life and I think we all feel that the time is right to start up a boutique bookshop.
4. I'm a huge fan of multi-arts and love the idea of combining books and art. And the literary crossover element is great, but will you have the same quality controls in place for the art as the books?
Quality is at the heart of what we do in Amuti and at To Hell with Publishing. Details on the art side of Laurence's interests and how properit all is are at amuti23.com.
5. You say you'll be sharing space with your publishing wing. Don't you worry that you'll get a buch of authors camping out in your shop?
We hope we will.
6. How do you intend to promote the shop? I imagine an exclusive club or newsletter like a fine wine appreciation society. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?
Yes - we'll be sending regular mail outs and organising regular events. It'll be a fine book appreciation society and pobably involve a certain amount of wine too.
7. You mention journals and you mention quality - from my literary fiction collective point of view, I have to ask: will you be stocking the things we can't get elsewhere - high quality chapbooks, novellas, poetry, even high quality special editions from self-publishers?
Yes - we're keen to support other independents as well as self-published work, just as long as its high quality. We'll be importing hard to find stuff from the US and rest of Europe too. I've heard you can buy poetry on Amazon these days, but it won't be as fun as buying it from us.
8. What's the space going to be like? I have two conflicting visions in my head - one is a gentleman's club with Hogarth prints and button-back chairs (I guess that's because of the address); the other is throw-covered sofas and graffiti walls like some of the cool arts places on Brick Lane. Is either of these close?
It'll be gentlemen's club meets Brick Lane. But without the throws - we're not really throw kind of people.
9. Do you intend to be a venue for people to come and hang out and talk literature? It's often struck me, as someone who's trying to create an online community that feels like the Left Bank of the 60s, that if literature's going to move forward we need places where anyone can come and swap ideas with anyone, where ideas can ferment (I imagine Malcolm MacLaren& Vivienne Westwood together on the King's Road). Do you see the shop as the physical home for a movement that encompasses your publishing wing and website, or is a shop just a place to sell books?
We're going to have a large dining room table in the middle of the roomfor everyone to sit round and chat and read at. Berets optional.
10. Because I'm asking everyone at the moment: are there any writers out there doing something exciting and new with the novel?
There are loads. We think our first novels novelist Grant Gillespie is possibly the finest example of one of them. We're publishing his book The Cuckoo Boy in April 2010. It's a quiet and beautiful story of an adopted child's disturbed and disturbing behaviour that succeeds in being funny too. And we love Richard Milward.
11. A question that sounds impertinent, but matters for setting the tone, let's play launch party balloon game. Suppose you knew they'd say yes: which of these makes it to your launch do:
- Nick Cave
- Nick Serota
- Beryl Bainbridge
- Kurt Cobain
- Jimmy Dean
- Dorothy Parker
- Max Clifford
- Brian Sewell
- Tracey Emin
- the skinhead who plasters haikus to the MacDonalds window on the corner
- Ian McEwan
- Salena Godden
- Jamie Oliver
We would rather the alive ones. And would quite enjoy seeing Brian Sewell and Nick Cave together.
Monday, 7 December 2009
The View From the Shoe: Fiona Robyn
I met Fiona Robyn through one of my lovely previous Views From the Shoe, Claire Grant. What fascinated me about her work was her plan for the launch of her new novel Thaw. The plan, nicely monickered Blogsplash, is for as many bloggers as possible to put the first page of the novel on their website on release date, March 1st 2010. I would encourage all bloggers out there to sign up and take part. Anyway, here's Fiona, in her own words:
Fiona Robyn is a novelist living in the countryside in Hampshire with her cats and vegetable patch. Her previous novels are The Letters and The Blue Handbag, and Thaw is out on the 1st of February. Her main site is at www.fionarobyn.com and she blogs about being a writer at www.plantingwords.com.
Thank you so much for your time. So, Louboutin or Converse?
I just had to google Louboutin to find out what it meant, which gives you your answer. I can’t walk in high heels. I had my first pair of Converse All Stars at Uni… happy memories!
Why is there no one in the world who does it quite like you?
Nobody does it quite like me because nobody IS quite like me.
What do you really, really love about it?
About writing? There are lots of things I don’t love, but I do love bringing my characters to life and hearing their stories. I love it when my readers love them as much as I do.
A bit more time in the day, or a bit more money in the bank?
Time, every time. I wouldn’t turn the money away though.
Imagine you “make it”. You wake up, and imagine the day ahead. Tell us about breakfast.
I would have earl grey and a cinnamon and raisin bagel, outside in the sun as I watched the birds and listened to them singing. Exactly like breakfast now, then. Maybe I’d be accompanied by Johnny Depp.
What’s your Jimmy Choo? And what’s just cobblers?
Hotel Chocolat chocolates, especially the butter caramels. Thorntons is cobblers.
Tell us about the last time a fan made you feel 100 feet tall.
A reader in America emailed me to say she’d had surgery for skin cancer recently, and had lots of waiting time at the hospital between procedures. She said that Leonard from my novel ‘The Blue Handbag’ kept her perfect company. Which writer could ask for anything more?
Independent and poor, or under contract and rich?
Under contract and poor ; )
Do you remember that bit on Play Away where Brian Cant stood behind people and did the actions whilst they spoke? If you could choose anyone to stand behind you and do the actions to your sales pitch, who would it be and why?
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
Frocks or socks?
Both, at the same time.
Thank you SOOO much
Fiona Robyn is a novelist living in the countryside in Hampshire with her cats and vegetable patch. Her previous novels are The Letters and The Blue Handbag, and Thaw is out on the 1st of February. Her main site is at www.fionarobyn.com and she blogs about being a writer at www.plantingwords.com.
Thank you so much for your time. So, Louboutin or Converse?
I just had to google Louboutin to find out what it meant, which gives you your answer. I can’t walk in high heels. I had my first pair of Converse All Stars at Uni… happy memories!
Why is there no one in the world who does it quite like you?
Nobody does it quite like me because nobody IS quite like me.
What do you really, really love about it?
About writing? There are lots of things I don’t love, but I do love bringing my characters to life and hearing their stories. I love it when my readers love them as much as I do.
A bit more time in the day, or a bit more money in the bank?
Time, every time. I wouldn’t turn the money away though.
Imagine you “make it”. You wake up, and imagine the day ahead. Tell us about breakfast.
I would have earl grey and a cinnamon and raisin bagel, outside in the sun as I watched the birds and listened to them singing. Exactly like breakfast now, then. Maybe I’d be accompanied by Johnny Depp.
What’s your Jimmy Choo? And what’s just cobblers?
Hotel Chocolat chocolates, especially the butter caramels. Thorntons is cobblers.
Tell us about the last time a fan made you feel 100 feet tall.
A reader in America emailed me to say she’d had surgery for skin cancer recently, and had lots of waiting time at the hospital between procedures. She said that Leonard from my novel ‘The Blue Handbag’ kept her perfect company. Which writer could ask for anything more?
Independent and poor, or under contract and rich?
Under contract and poor ; )
Do you remember that bit on Play Away where Brian Cant stood behind people and did the actions whilst they spoke? If you could choose anyone to stand behind you and do the actions to your sales pitch, who would it be and why?
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
Frocks or socks?
Both, at the same time.
Thank you SOOO much
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Hold a Self-Publisher to Account: Month 3
Stats:
Downloads
smashwords: 222
Scribd: 6
total: 228 (forecast 200)
Sales
Lulu direct: 2
Bookshop: 2
Me direct:
My copies from Lulu
Total: 4 (forecast 5)
Events
It was a very quiet month as I predicted - not much publicity for my own book because I was concentrating so much on Free-e-day and the new Year Zero books. Significant events were:
4th November - Nylon Mag list Year Zero as their site of the day (a spike of around 300 extra hits to the Year Zero site on the day, that sustained over a substantial period)
4th November - Penny Goring's "Temporary Passport" is discovered on the Year Zero site and will be made into a film
6th review of Songs on Sulci Collective blog
7th - interview with a local journalist
8th flyers for Songs on display at a college alumni event celebrating 20th anniversary of fall of Berlin Wall
9th Berlin wall anniversary. I tweet five or six times, and there is a spike of 200 extra views on smashwords
20th Songs wins the Litchat #litpitch comp on twitter
28th my article on social media appears in issue one of literary ezine Words with Jam
29th SKIN BOOK featured on the Writer's Muse site
Analysis
The downloads were up on expectation - analysis of the daily chart shows this is entirely down to the Berlin Wall anniversary. Other than that I note with interest not a single sale or a download blip as a result of the flyers (although, of course, the 9th November blip may be a result of this and not twitter, but the volume of retweets suggests otherwise). This is significant as it emphasises the importance of a personal presence at these events and selling on the spot rather than through flyer.
In the build up to Free-e-day there was a surge of interest in the Year Zero site and the Free-e-day site, but these did not convert to personal downloads - the results of Free-e-day itself will go in December.
Forecast
I anticipate a busier month but a disappointing one for sales. My personal attention will be focused on the new Year Zero anthology and forthcoming tour for it as well as selling chapbooks of SKIN BOOK. Sales of Songs will depend on whether family buy copies for Christmas. Forecast: 5 - through bookshops as I start to do more instore in preparation for getting the new Year Zero books into shops. I may be able to do further live readings before Christmas enabling on site sales.
I anticipate downloads to be back to 300 after Free-e-day and because I will be focusing on marketing the Year Zero books as a package before Christmas, sending press releases and focusing on magazine forums. Songs will also feature on the Writers' Muse website. There will be a mention of Year Zero in Writers' Forum.
I anticipate a significant upturn in sales in late January as I get Amazon listed - I will finally this week get a Lulu ISBN, a decision not taken lightly but financially necessitated.
NOTES: SMASHWORDS will not guarantee delivery of timely figures for Barnes & Noble downloads. Mark Coker is aware of this column and the fact that I am calling them out over this (and apologising to my readers for any resultatnt confusion), and has, helpfully, agreed to ensure 1. I get figures eventually and 2. that smashwords will work to inmprove delivery of figures. I am as ever grateful to Mark. He is also aware I will call smashwords ut ina big way if they fail to deliver on this. AMAZON figures will not necessarily be timely. I will also call them out when necessity dictates. Unlike Smashwords I doubt they will care
Downloads
smashwords: 222
Scribd: 6
total: 228 (forecast 200)
Sales
Lulu direct: 2
Bookshop: 2
Me direct:
My copies from Lulu
Total: 4 (forecast 5)
Events
It was a very quiet month as I predicted - not much publicity for my own book because I was concentrating so much on Free-e-day and the new Year Zero books. Significant events were:
4th November - Nylon Mag list Year Zero as their site of the day (a spike of around 300 extra hits to the Year Zero site on the day, that sustained over a substantial period)
4th November - Penny Goring's "Temporary Passport" is discovered on the Year Zero site and will be made into a film
6th review of Songs on Sulci Collective blog
7th - interview with a local journalist
8th flyers for Songs on display at a college alumni event celebrating 20th anniversary of fall of Berlin Wall
9th Berlin wall anniversary. I tweet five or six times, and there is a spike of 200 extra views on smashwords
20th Songs wins the Litchat #litpitch comp on twitter
28th my article on social media appears in issue one of literary ezine Words with Jam
29th SKIN BOOK featured on the Writer's Muse site
Analysis
The downloads were up on expectation - analysis of the daily chart shows this is entirely down to the Berlin Wall anniversary. Other than that I note with interest not a single sale or a download blip as a result of the flyers (although, of course, the 9th November blip may be a result of this and not twitter, but the volume of retweets suggests otherwise). This is significant as it emphasises the importance of a personal presence at these events and selling on the spot rather than through flyer.
In the build up to Free-e-day there was a surge of interest in the Year Zero site and the Free-e-day site, but these did not convert to personal downloads - the results of Free-e-day itself will go in December.
Forecast
I anticipate a busier month but a disappointing one for sales. My personal attention will be focused on the new Year Zero anthology and forthcoming tour for it as well as selling chapbooks of SKIN BOOK. Sales of Songs will depend on whether family buy copies for Christmas. Forecast: 5 - through bookshops as I start to do more instore in preparation for getting the new Year Zero books into shops. I may be able to do further live readings before Christmas enabling on site sales.
I anticipate downloads to be back to 300 after Free-e-day and because I will be focusing on marketing the Year Zero books as a package before Christmas, sending press releases and focusing on magazine forums. Songs will also feature on the Writers' Muse website. There will be a mention of Year Zero in Writers' Forum.
I anticipate a significant upturn in sales in late January as I get Amazon listed - I will finally this week get a Lulu ISBN, a decision not taken lightly but financially necessitated.
NOTES: SMASHWORDS will not guarantee delivery of timely figures for Barnes & Noble downloads. Mark Coker is aware of this column and the fact that I am calling them out over this (and apologising to my readers for any resultatnt confusion), and has, helpfully, agreed to ensure 1. I get figures eventually and 2. that smashwords will work to inmprove delivery of figures. I am as ever grateful to Mark. He is also aware I will call smashwords ut ina big way if they fail to deliver on this. AMAZON figures will not necessarily be timely. I will also call them out when necessity dictates. Unlike Smashwords I doubt they will care
Free-e-day live
Free-e-day live was the real-life gig to tie in with Free-e-day, the global online celebraion of internet culture that I dreamt up on the bus one afternoon and ended up attracting 100 participants all offering amazing creative things for free, and giving us workshops and webchats with invaluable resources for anyone outside the mainstream. It has been all a bit of a wonderful haze.
Free-e-day live was put together by local singer-songwriter Nikki Loy (pictured) who, being an illustrator as well as musician, embraced the multi-arts idea behind the festival. Held at Oxford's Cafe Tarifa, the night featured an art ecxhibition, belly dancers dressed as skeletons, music and reading. It was a fantastic night with a fantastic crowd. Let me bore you with a LITTLE about what makes a live, indie occasion like this great.
First off there's the hyper-contrived shot for the local rag (who thought, for some reason, that we were giving away electronic gadgets and wanted Nikki and I to hold up some mobile phobnes for the photoshoot!). next there's the inevitable when you invite people from London. As the 8 o'clock kick-off approached, 2 writers and the headline band remained, as so many before them, and so man
y, I dare say, to come, stranded on the M40. Never have I been so pleased (I'm always pleased to see him, but I can't remember physically bear-hugging him before) to see Roland (pictured left), who gave us a brilliant rendition of Chapter 17 of The Beach Beneath the Pavement. Hearing his words somehow made them even funnier than they had been on the page, a reminder that stories - whatever your age and their genre - are best read aloud.
y, I dare say, to come, stranded on the M40. Never have I been so pleased (I'm always pleased to see him, but I can't remember physically bear-hugging him before) to see Roland (pictured left), who gave us a brilliant rendition of Chapter 17 of The Beach Beneath the Pavement. Hearing his words somehow made them even funnier than they had been on the page, a reminder that stories - whatever your age and their genre - are best read aloud.Setting the reader-musician rhythm we were next treated to a rather endearing keyboard and vocals set from the big-voiced Mol Hodge. "Most of 
my songs are a bit morbid" she told us nervously. "Bloody hell, if you think that's morbid just wait for SKIN BOOK" I thought. Mol has a great voice, and plenty of time on her side, and as she explores the melodic range of her music over the years to come is sure to be someone we see more of.
my songs are a bit morbid" she told us nervously. "Bloody hell, if you think that's morbid just wait for SKIN BOOK" I thought. Mol has a great voice, and plenty of time on her side, and as she explores the melodic range of her music over the years to come is sure to be someone we see more of.Nikesh Shukla is someone the world has already seen plenty of. With a string of TV and radio credits, festival appearances, awards and the like, he is far the most advanced and successful of any of ourt artists on the night, and we were hideous lucky to snag him - not only that he doled out copies of his kidologies CD to grateful audience members. Having introduced Nikesh as a poet he proceeded to read us a short story, but th
e performance element of Rap Tracks - a hilarious tale of pre-teen rap, Asian grandmothers and Gujurati dialect - was the match of anything slam poetry can offer. More confirmation that anyone who says writers can't engage an audience with prose is talking nonsense.
e performance element of Rap Tracks - a hilarious tale of pre-teen rap, Asian grandmothers and Gujurati dialect - was the match of anything slam poetry can offer. More confirmation that anyone who says writers can't engage an audience with prose is talking nonsense.I met Nikki Loy, who came on as Nikesh departed back for the next of 20 gigs in 32 days, when she was busking on Oxford's St Giles. I was so taken with her guitar and vocals I snaffled a card and dropped her an e-mail, and I've been impressed with her ebergy, verve, and all-round artistic enthusiasm ever since. This was the first time I've seen her live, and I was impressed by the way she handles a crowd and the way she handles a guitar. She too had freebie CDs that were gobbled up gladly.
In the interval, N
ikki came up to me and said "can you hold this?" pointing to a UV tube. "Er, OK" I said rather confusedly, until I saw what was coming next, a train of skeletons snaking to the stage who proceeded to shake their fluorescent booty to music I was too gobsmacked to notice much but think may have been some scuzzy Goldfrapp.
ikki came up to me and said "can you hold this?" pointing to a UV tube. "Er, OK" I said rather confusedly, until I saw what was coming next, a train of skeletons snaking to the stage who proceeded to shake their fluorescent booty to music I was too gobsmacked to notice much but think may have been some scuzzy Goldfrapp. The Scary Skele-belly Dancers gave me the perfect segue into the world premiere of the whole of SKIN BOOK - you know "those were th bones, now for some skin" - ah the joys of improv! Won't say much about me (below). That would be rude. Suffice to say my opinion remains unchanged - performing to a live audience is THE best thing a writer can do - feeling attentive eyes, listening to the gasps the sighs - that kind of engagement is what writing is all about. I THINK people enjoyed it - if enjoy is the right word for a story about a woman whose diary is made from skin she harvested from her twin bro.
The headline act seemed to enjoy it, though, which was nice. The Joker and The Thief describe themselves as a folk blues combo which had me worried before the show. I dislike folk so much I wouldn't hand a picture of Fleet Foxes to my dartboard because it would be unfair to the bristles. But The Joker and the Thief were an unexpected delight. Full of energy (proper energy - the kind you actually believe might just come from some kind of dark passionate place rather than the gurning wurzelly cheeriness of much folk), they delivered a set that was variegated and exciting. They have a penchant for playing around with different instruments, whcih added colour to the set - from frontman Dan (sounds like an epithet from Total Wipeouut) banging the cymbals with an assortment
of bells and sticks, to Josh's alternation of ukelele, sax and accordian (far my favourite - I could almost feel myself on the set of Amelie). A pretty much perfect night was rounded off when two of the skele-bellies came back dressed in burlesque and the crowd dispersed happily into the night.
There seem to be some obvious lessons from a night like this. Everyone would do well to bear them in mind:
1. There is a ridiculous wealth of talent outside the mainstream.
2. The creative world is full of almost boundless energy, enthusiasm, and can-do attitude.
3. Writers are every bit as engaging as musicians.
Here's hoping this is the first of very many such nights I get the pleasure of being involved in. A HUGE thanks to all who contributed, to Cafe Tarifa for being such great hosts, and most of all to Nikki for making it happen.
A full list of artists who contributed to the exhibition:
Cheryl Pearce – Poet
cherylpearce@yahoo.com
cherylpearce@yahoo.com
James Whayman
– Photographer
http://www.unformedmind.com/
Sarah Kennedy – Artist
email: acrylicartist@gmail.com
http://www.sarahkennedyart.com/
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