After 20 years of writing, my first novel, Swapping Purples for Yellows, finally entered the world in August of 2019. The book took four years to write, another two to sell, and 18 months to edit and prepare for publication. Along the way, my daughter grew from a newborn into third-grader; my wife and I bought a new, bigger house to accommodate this addition to our family; and I went from being a stay-at-home father to a full-time college instructor. This book remained the one constant. Now that it has been released, I've begun reflecting on the experience of getting to this point-and even have what I hope is a little insight into the process.
Links of the week November 18 2019 (47)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
25 November 2019
1. Networking happens outside of Brooklyn, too.
I live in an actual one-stoplight town in North Carolina, so when I read articles that advised getting an agent by asking your friends to introduce you to their agents or pitching agents at high-priced conferences, I despaired. Nevertheless, I found my publisher through networking even though I live in the middle of nowhere. A year before I finished the novel, I attended a nearby writers' workshop alongside another novelist-in-training who would later start his own "fiercely independent" small press, Southern Fried Karma. I submitted to their first novel contest not because I thought I would have an "in" with him but because I knew him to be a savvy businessman. If anyone could make a success out of a fledgling press, I knew it was he. I didn't win the contest-which was judged externally, for the record-but I was a finalist. He offered me a "revise and resubmit," providing a lengthy editorial letter on spec, and it worked.
My first love was in a band. His advice about music translated easily to the writing life-or I made it fit, those nights I was killing time backstage in dive bars during sound check. "Leave them wanting more" was his advice on playing. So I won't drone on when I give readings, erring on the side of reading too little.
"All money made by the band goes back to the band" is another one of his sayings-easy to follow when I made only $10 here and there publishing poems. My first three books were poetry, published because they had won contests.
Women's financial lives are different than men's. We earn less, of course-women of color earn least of all-and we also save less. We are often forced to drop out of the workforce for years at a time because of caregiving. We are less likely to have credit cards, bank accounts, cars, property, and utility bills in our name. We are less likely to have an established credit history because we often have to leave jobs or are forced out. We are more likely to be financially abused or to be trapped in relationships that are controlling, dangerous, or even deadly. Escape from such relationships is not only emotionally and physically difficult, it is also expensive, with women's incomes declining an average of 20% after divorce (which is itself costly), according to research conducted by a London School of Economics professor. For many women, poverty after divorce is chronic.
Indigenous literature has been one of the top-performing categories for local booksellers in 2019, and international publishers are noticing a similar increase in interest for books written by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authors.
In the decade since she moved abroad in 2009, Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch says something extraordinary has happened in Australia. "Major publishers are picking up Indigenous writers and putting them at the top of their catalogues," she says. "We weren't being read 10 years ago. Maybe one of us was being read per year."
From a related article:
The appetite for Indigenous literature has even caught the attention of academics. Dr Paul Crosby, from Macquarie University's Department of Economics, is trying to measure how demand has changed over the past decade. He hopes to hand down his findings next year.
"We've got a clear indication that there's a renaissance in Indigenous literature at the moment," he says. "There's been some self-reporting in the industry but as for academic studies of this scale, it hasn't happened before. It's a fascinating area to be in. For arts funding, the more data and research we can give people, the better."
Until the 2010s, if you were reading, it generally meant you weren't doing it online. Though change had been in the offing, this was the decade that irreversibly altered how we consume text - when the smartphone transformed from a marvel to a staple. Suddenly, the sharpest cultural and political analysis came in the form of a distracted boyfriend meme. Racists deployed a playful cartoon frog to sugar their messages. From the Arab Spring onward, the best reporters were often panicked bystanders with Twitter accounts.
It would seem as if few times in history could be less hospitable to literature. Not even 20 years ago we mostly read about things in lag, on thin slices of tree, whereas now we do this, whatever this is. Yet instead of technology superannuating literature once and for all, it seems to have created a new space in our minds for it.
As the decade began, there were reasons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn't cascaded into total financial collapse. Obamacare, for all its flaws, was passed, and then came the Iran deal and the Paris climate accords. Sure, there were danger signs: the anger of the tea party, the slow hollowing out of legacy news media, a troubling sense that somehow the bankers got away with it. But then maybe the immediacy of social media gave some hope, at least if you listened to the chatter of the bright young kids in the Bay Area trying to build a new kind of unmediated citizenship. Maybe everyday celebrity, post-gatekeeper, would change the world for the better. Some of that happened. But we also ended up with the alt-right and Donald Trump, inequality, impeachment, and debilitating FOMO. How did we get here?
Lady Oracle is both the title of a Margaret Atwood novel (1976, very funny) and the author's unofficial epithet. Crack open a news source today and you'll find something that Atwood speculated about a decade or three ago in one of her novels: lab-grown meat, environmental catastrophe, state surveillance, the diminishment of reproductive autonomy, antimicrobial clothes. Atwood isn't thrilled about her reputation as a cheerful eschatologist and has pointed out that it rests on a misunderstanding of dystopian fiction, which, she argues, isn't a prediction of the future, dummies, it's an interpretation of the present. In other words, If you're not seeing what I'm seeing, you're not paying attention.
Picador has announced "with great sadness" news of the death of Clive James, who passed away peacefully at home on Sunday 24th November after a long illness, aged 80.
James was a Picador author for 40 years and was the longest continuously published author on the list, with some 40 titles in all. The first Picador James title was Unreliable Memoirs; it was an immediate bestseller and went on to sell over a million copies, according to Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books, and remained with the imprint ever since.
Picador poetry editor Don Paterson said: "While James had always written poetry, it became his principal focus in his last decade; this unexpected late blossoming produced book after book of effortlessly-turned, moving and memorable verse, which saw several of his poems - among them the celebrated ‘Japanese Maple' - shared around the world. It was however typical of James's immense generosity that the last book he'd finish - The Fire of Joy, a reader's guide to his favourite poems from the English canon - was a work of pure enthusiasm. James was always prized for his superhuman learning (he really had read all those books) and one of the greatest turns of phrase in contemporary English; but he also possessed the rarest and most valuable skill we find in the critic: the language of praise. Any encounter with James, either in print or in person, left you desperate to go and open a book, watch a film or a TV show, or hunt down a recording. With Clive's passing we lose the wisest and funniest of writers, a loyal and kind friend, and the most finely-stocked mind we will ever have the fortune to encounter.''
On a cool winter's day in Cairo, I stepped into the Marriott Hotel and wandered over to the local bakery tucked away near the lavish hotel gardens. In the far corner of the small room sat Umm Kulthoum Mahfouz. We were meeting to discuss her recollections of her father, the late Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel laureate author, who still held the most recognizable name in Arabic literature. Instead, I found myself engrossed in a story of copyright and licensing infringement that shed light on the exploitative nature of one of Egypt's most respected publishers.
During the course of a career that spans over 70 years, Naguib Mahfouz, the son of a lower-middle class civil servant, wrote 34 novels, 5 plays, and 15 short story collections, in genres ranging from historical fiction and realism to stream of consciousness, noir, and existentialism. Prior to being selected for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, his readership was generally limited to the Middle East and North Africa, where he was widely read and respected. However, following the selection, Mahfouz's books surged in popularity and were translated into dozens of languages, offering readers around the world informed criticism of British colonialism, Egyptian nationalism, and social change while capturing the essence of Egyptian culture, not many Westerners are familiar with, in the 20th century. Critics compared Mahfouz's descriptions through Cairo to those of Charles Dickens' London and the St. Petersburg of Fyodor Dostoyevsky .
It's funny, but if you'd asked me a few years ago (when I was 14 and had just finished the first draft of Inside Out) whether the book had anything to do with my disability, I would have given you an emphatic "No". My writing has always been a part of me, much like my disability, but for a long time I kept the two things stubbornly separate. As I have gotten older, and the publication date of the book finally draws near, the picture is becoming more complicated.
Before I go on, I ought to explain my disability. Cerebral palsy (CP) is an umbrella term, given to a collection of permanent conditions often caused by premature birth. Because it can affect those who have it in different ways, I want to make it clear that the account I give of its affect on my life and writing career is entirely personal. I cannot speak for all disabled writers, nor would I want to if I could. Nonetheless, my condition has had an impact on the road to publication of this book, and that impact runs deeper than many of those reading this would perhaps assume.
Anyway, back to the interesting stuff. The most obvious way in which CP has affected me is that I am a lifelong wheelchair user. So the age-old solution to writer's block - "Take a walk in the fresh air" - is impossible to execute. The faffing around and paraphernalia involved in getting out of the house each day (getting out of bed, washed, and dressed) cannot be accomplished quickly or without help.
18 November 2019
The author Bill Bryson is sitting before a lectern in Audible's London headquarters, narrating his latest book, a disquisition on human biology called The Body: A Guide For Occupants. Seen through the window of the recording booth, Bryson's face is largely obscured by the microphone in front of him, but his voice is clear and measured. On the other side of the glass, Bryson's producer follows the text on an iPad, adding cryptic marks to the margins with a stylus.
Bryson makes steady progress until he runs into the word glomerulonephritis, which he can't get his tongue around. He backs up to the beginning of the sentence, as if preparing to charge at a thicket, but when he reaches the word it defeats him again. "Fucking hell," he says, under his breath.
In the two decades since Bryson recorded his first narration, the audiobook market has grown from a publishing industry side hustle into a huge global business. In a climate where print and ebook sales are stagnant, the UK audiobook market rose to £69m in 2018, an increase of 43% on the previous year. In the US, audiobook downloads generate revenue of close to a billion dollars annually. This growth has largely been driven by the rise of Audible, the Amazon-owned platform that dominates the digital audiobook market through its subscription streaming service, though there are other players, including Storytel, which operates largely in Scandinavian countries. In the 1990s, before the iPod was launched, Audible was selling a proprietary digital media player that held about two hours of audio downloaded from its online library. Today, Audible's catalogue contains more than 400,000 titles; in 2018, its members downloaded nearly three billion hours of content.
For self-published authors, getting your book into the hands of readers who are specifically interested in your genre or your expertise is imperative. Even if you've managed to get your work into bookstores, your title is one thousands of books they carry. Online, your title is one among millions. So how do you stand out? Presentations.
When you find the right venues for a presentation about your book, you are the expert that people (readers) have come to see and hear. This results in a deeper connection to you and your book as well as stronger book sales and a more robust and loyal following.
Most authors have held at least one book signing that makes them want to give up writing altogether. The sad little table at a bookstore. The avoidant glances. The one lonely reader who tells you their whole life story and waves goodbye without buying a book.
The tiny number of book sales is barely enough to cover the container of ice cream needed to soothe your tired soul. Presentations, however, can result in greater sales - as well as profit, if readers purchase a book directly from you that you - ordered at cost. So, stop signing and start speaking. Ask yourself: What is your unique viewpoint on the space-time continuum, on a historic battle, the style or voice you write in?
It was mostly sunny throughout the seventh edition of the China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair (CCBF), which concluded its three-day run on November 17. The mood of the exhibitors and visitors was equally sunny and positive. And the same could be said for event co-organizer BolognaFiere, which was back for its second outing with a more ambitious (and successful) agenda.
To be sure, the Chinese children's book market is immense (with 370 million people under the age of 18) and it continues to expand (prodded along by the 17.5 million babies born annually). According to OpenBook, a clearinghouse for publishing statistics in China, as of September this year, the children's book segment accounted for 26.1% of the total Chinese book market. This continuous expansion, from 8.5% in 1999 to 25.4% in 2018, was the siren song that lured some 400 exhibitors-of which 30% were first-timers-to participate in CCBF. Overall, the three biggest categories are children's literature, comics, and reference titles while the fastest-growing ones are English language learning books and pop-science publications.
The poet laureate's new prize for a collection that focuses on the environment highlights a crisis that can no longer be ignored, plus an exclusive new poem
Poet laureate Simon Armitage is to use his laureate's honorarium to create a new poetry prize for environmentally themed poetry, describing the climate crisis as a "background hum that won't go away" when he is writing. The Laurel prize, which will be run by Poetry School, will go to the best collection of poems "with nature and the environment at their heart", with the aim of highlighting "the challenges facing our planet". The first prize, which will be awarded on 23 May 2020 at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, will be judged by Armitage, nature writer Robert Macfarlane and the poet Moniza Alvi.
Cynicism has always played a large role in corporate publishing. It's a cliché, at this point, to talk about the young editor who enters the field dreaming of making art and instead ends up peddling diet books. I began my own publishing career as an editor at Free Press, a general imprint of Simon & Schuster that recently relaunched as a conservative one, the current publisher of Tucker Carlson. But even in my day, Free Press published figures like Joel Osteen (a preacher of prosperity gospel) and Tony Robbins (the self-help guru with a history of misogynistic and harmful behavior). Publishing these best sellers was a necessary compromise: Those blockbusters paid for the small-run short story collections and debut novels. David Brooks and Ann Coulter have been staples of best-seller lists over the past couple decades, and there will always be authors with whom I don't agree. Books are consumer products, and what's popular isn't always what's good, plot-wise or morals-wise.
All that said, when the leader of our country-a man who successfully self-mythologized his way into the American consciousness with his own 1987 ghostwritten book, The Art of the Deal (Ballantine)-is claiming that the press is the "enemy of the people" while backed by Fox News, a network that peddles in conspiracy theories and racist dog whistles, it's time to acknowledge that the stakes have changed. And yet, instead of trying to stop the spread of disinformation, corporate publishers-otherwise known as the Big Five, comprising Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster-are still putting out books by people who not only play fast and loose with the facts, but who actively spread hate.
BookLife, Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/'s website and monthly supplement dedicated to self-publishing, has launched BookLife Reviews, a paid reviews service open exclusively to self-published authors.
BookLife Reviews will be written by Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/ reviewers, but remain distinct from Publishers Weekly reviews. The service is designed to help self-published authors reach readers by providing them with credible and reliable assessments of their work from reviewers with expertise in their genres and styles.
In the meticulous biography Becoming C.S. Lewis, the first of a planned trilogy, Harry Lee Poe chronicles Lewis's first 20 years: it is the death of Lewis's mother, when he was nine years old, that Poe asserts caused Lewis (1898-1963) to ponder life's big questions and the problem of suffering. Poe closely examines Lewis's education, starting with two years at Wynyard School in England-a miserable place known for beating its students-then short stints at other schools, before, at age 14, studying under William Kirkpatrick, who influenced Lewis's atheist beliefs (Lewis's conversion to Christianity didn't occur until his 30s). This excellent work will have readers eagerly anticipating the next volume. Poe shares some little-known facts about the writer.
C.S. Lewis gained acclaim as a children's author for his classic series The Chronicles of Narnia. He also gained acclaim for his popular apologetics, including such works as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. What is more, he gained acclaim as a science fiction writer for his Ransom Trilogy. Furthermore, he gained acclaim for his scholarly work in Medieval and Renaissance literature with The Allegory of Love and A Preface to Paradise Lost. Many writers have their fleeting moment of fame before their books become yesterday's child - all the rage and then has-been. Remarkably, Lewis's books in all of these areas have remained in print for seventy, eighty, and ninety years. Over the years, the print runs have grown.
Our warehouse, in Camberwell, wasn't designed for book distribution - it was built to make violins! But over the years we've transformed it into a hugely efficient space, which can house up to 250,000 books. In 2013 we could send just 600,000 books a year. Last year we sent 62 shipments carrying 1.28 million books, all donated by our generous UK publishing partners.
The books that our partners need vary a lot. The Malawi National Library requires completely different books for its branch libraries from those needed by a small NGO working in a Greek refugee camp, and it's our job to make sure everyone gets the books that suit them. The job is made much easier by our publishing partners, who fine tune their donations, providing exactly the sorts of books our beneficiaries require and sometimes even shipping pre-picked donations to us or to a partner overseas.