|
Writers' magazine |
Comment 08 |
|
|
|
|
CommentSome sharp comment from people in the book world in 2008 Comment archive 2008 archive 2007 archive 2006 archive 2005 archive 2004 archive 2003 archive 2002 archive 2001
An overnight success 'I never planned to be a children's writer. I wrote short stories for obscure and wonderful magazines. Then one day a new story flared into life. I knew that it was the culmination of years of hard work and, amazingly, that it was a children's novel. Skellig was taken by the first publisher to read it, won a string of prizes, and has been published in 30 languages. I was an overnight success after almost 20 years.' David Almond in The Times
Working as a Poet in the Community ‘Interestingly (to me, anyway) it’s meant that I’ve had to become three types
of poet. There’s the Slim Volume Poet: the poet who writes what most people
think of as Contemporary Poetry, (but which is often not very linguistically
adventurous, and just sounds like gentle stand-up comedy chopped about a bit,
and which I try to move away from when I can); there’s the Out Loud Poet who is
called upon to perform at events where they need a performer who can be a bit of
a battering-ram, who can enthuse a crowd who weren’t expecting to like poetry,
in the upstairs room of a pub, or in a draughty public hall at the edge of a
windy estate, or on a train full of sweaty commuters, and there’s the Occasional
Poet, the poet who can be called on to write something light and rhyming to
liven up a public event, to introduce someone or open a new building, and then
(in my case, with the aid of my trusty flipchart and a couple of felt-tip pens)
create an Instant Poem with the audience to send them away happy. Ian McMillan in his article on The Poet in the Community: A little adventure on 57 Productions’ website, along with other interesting articles on poetry.
'Readers want to read more' 'Despite resistance from all sectors of our industry, the book market is changing. Readers want to read more and if they are going to increase the amount of books they buy they are almost certainly going to do that in the cheaper paperback formats. Consumers will read literary fiction if we present it to them in a way they find attractive and enticing. Once an author has built a sufficient following then they probably can justify the move to hardback, but not before. Why pay £16.99 ($35) for a novel by someone you've never heard of when you could buy three or four paperbacks for the same price?' Scott Pack of the Friday Project in the Bookseller
Authors on the road 'We whine a lot, but it's not so hard. You stay in fancy hotels, and go to signings where people buy your books and want your autograph and tell you lots of nice things… I remember with my first book… no-one would show up at my signings. So where I am now, I have a greater appreciation of it all… (but) I have to remember that what got me here was writing books, and I want each one to be better than the last.' Harlan Coben, author of The Woods, in Publishing News
On teaching creative writing 'I tell them to forget about the business. That's nothing to do with me… They'll figure it out in the end. If they haven't got talent, you're not going to give it to them, but they will have it because you've chosen them. But they might turn out to not have will; which you can't always judge very easily at the beginning. If they don't have will, they're screwed. But you can't make them write every day or get up early in the morning; you can give them an example, or tell them what they should be doing, and they might listen.' Peter Carey, talking to Erica Wagner in The Times
The end of the novel? 'For a commissioning editor, the pressing question is this: when most books are sold on the net as downloads, how will this change their content? My hunch is that will finally spell the end of the novel. Of course there are good, perhaps even great novelists writing today. But in contemporary fiction there seem to be no monumental novels that dominate our mental landscape in the same way as the masterpieces of Dickens, Thackeray or George Eliot. Few titanic novels wrestle with the great questions of life and death and seek to alter our perceptions of them… The great new literary form that will replace the novel will, I believe, arise on the net and will take on its wild frontier spirit, its intellectual risk-taking, its two fingers at academic control-freakery, but it will also help forge a new form of consciousness in a much more fundamental way that has to do with the form of the internet.' Mark Booth, Publishing Director of Century, part of Random House UK, in the Independent on Sunday.
Writing thrillers 'The bad guys always have good bits in them and the good guys can have bad bits. My books are true to life both in subject matter and in how the plot develops - as a journalist, I like writing thrillers because they're more closely based on reality. But you can't mess around - everything has to be plausible and has to have happened, in some form, in the real world. So, I like my books to be open-ended.' Stephen Leather, whose latest title Dead Men is just out, in Publishing News
'A posh profession' 'Publishing this book made me an author, and I have since gone on to write other books, some about publishing/writing but also about parenting… So my views on the industry are sharpened by an awareness of feelings on both sides. Publishing remains rather a posh profession, and although there have been initiatives to widen recruitment… the workforce remains substantially white, middle-class, inward-looking. Publishers are suspicious of activities they don't engage in themselves, and it is increasingly up to the author/agent to prove an unfamiliar market exists.' Alison Baverstock, author of the authoritative How to Market Books, in Publishing News
Finding an agent 'Finding an agent can be even harder than finding a publisher. If you can find an established author who will recommend you to one, or some other personal contact, that's a good way to get them to read your typescript. Or you can look for someone who hasn’t been an agent for long, and who might be more hungry, have more time and be ready to take a chance on you.' Mandy Little, MD of Watson Little in the Sunday Times
TV tie-ins and children's reading 'I have published both "literary" books and licensed programmes, and have also managed some of the world's most famous classic book '"brands". Is one better than the other? It's like trying to decide between soup and pudding when both have a place on the menu. Children need a balanced diet, and above all they need books that they will enjoy, which match their interests and which encourage them to read. For long-term health they need plenty of the rich, nutritious soup of a great novel or picture book. They also need the comfort, stimulation and energy source of pudding - books that reflect what they meet every day. Both must be prepared with integrity and the best ingredients… For children who have difficulty with reading or just aren't interested, books based on familiar programming can be the vital hook that turns them into readers. As publishers, retailers and reviewers we owe our children, exposed to an unprecedented barrage from all kinds of media, a very catholic offering which admits the worth of good books of all kinds. We are all making readers.' Sally Floyer, MD of Penguin UK's brands and licensing division, in the Bookseller.
'If nothing new ever happens' 'For the book writer, the creative writer, the knowledge of a market of billions out there waiting to be tapped, is fascinating and baffling. The sorry fact is that the conventional publishing industry is currently running round like a headless chicken, giving readers what they think it wants, and getting it wrong, and losing money hand over fist. If you give people what they want, nothing new can ever happen. If it worked in the past, think the bottom line thinkers - ie made a profit - it will work for ever and ever. So, just do it again. But if nothing new ever happens, the audience drifts away.' Fay Weldon on Writing for the New Media in Writing and Education
'The Storyteller, the dream-maker' 'The storyteller is deep inside every one of us. The storymaker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is ravaged by war, by the horrors of that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise. But the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed, it is the storyteller, the dream-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.' Doris Lessing, in her Nobel Laureate's address
On having a famous father 'At the beginning there were people who said "She only got this deal because she's his daughter." There were people at home who refused to buy the book because they thought it had only been published for that reason - so I think it balanced out. People didn't know how long I'd be around. But nobody's debating with me about it any more. I've never felt I've written something and then deleted it because my dad's who he is, but then I'm not that kind of a writer. I'm fairly balanced about things - nothing is too severe or too extreme - and I think that's just the person I am as a result of growing up in a home where your parents always have to see both sides of everything. You have to be like that when you negotiate. My father's always looking at the two sides.' Cecelia Ahern, daughter of the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, in the Bookseller
Four wars ' The publishing industry today is in a position rarely, if ever, experienced before: we suddenly have the upper hand. To wit, there are four wars raging today that are changing the nature of publishing and putting us in the driver's seat: discoverability, print on demand (PoD), repositories, and e-ink readers.All of these wars revolve around the notion of long tail, the theory that the optimized search capabilities provide almost endless access to otherwise obscure products and that the demand for these obscure products exceeds demand for bestsellers. Long tail is in effect the Holy Grail of an industry which pushes out more content every year, backlist growing exponentially with each new season of frontlist. Longtail in book publishing is about selling books we no longer actively promote.' Evan Schnittman, Vice-President of Business Development and Rights for the Academic and USA divisions of OUP in Publishing News
Comment archive 2006 archive 2005 archive 2004 archive 2003 archive 2002 archive 2001 |
|
©WritersServices.com 2001-2008 |
