AN EVENING OF CRIME WITH SALT

THURSDAY 20th JUNE, 6.30 P.M. – 7.30 P.M.

CHRISTINA JAMES, LAURA ELLEN JOYCE and MATTHEW PRITCHARD tell how they embarked upon a life of crime. With readings from their novels and tips on writing and how to get published.

Linda Bennett reports on Bowker’s 2013 Books and the Consumer Conference and provides some further thoughts.

Bowker, the London-based market research and metadata agency, holds an annual conference to showcase its reports and very generously makes quite a lot of the statistics presented available afterwards. The following is a summary of the statistics presented at this year’s conference, followed by some suggestions from Linda Bennett on how authors can make the most of this information.

British consumers bought 296m books in 2012. £125m was spent on e-books in 2012, more than double the figure spent in 2011, but not enough to prevent a 1% decrease in the value of consumer book purchases overall. E-books did, however, fuel growth in volume purchases in 2012. The drop in overall book spend in 2012 followed decreases in the three previous years, with the result that the value of consumer book purchases in 2012 was 10% lower than in 2008. Spending on printed books was down 16% over the five year period, although print still accounted for more than 90% of total book spend in 2012.

In terms of volume, e-books accounted for 11% of consumer book purchases in 2012 as a whole, dropping back from a 12% peak in the third quarter, to 10% the fourth quarter as consumers bought proportionately more printed books as gifts in the run-up to Christmas. In adult fiction, however, the e-book share continued to rise throughout the year, accounting for nearly one in five books purchased in this category in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared with less than one in eight in the same period in 2011. Over 2012 as a whole, e-books accounted for more than a fifth of all purchases of romantic, crime and classic fiction.

The rise of e-books in the adult fiction market has been mainly at the expense of paperbacks, whose share has fallen from nearly nine in every ten purchases in this category in 2010, to two in three in 2012. However, despite losing share, spending on printed fiction rose in 2012, and together with e-books helped deliver double digit growth in the value of this sector when compared with 2011. 2012 also saw e-books take an ever increasing share of purchases in the Young Adult market (many of these books are of course bought for adult readers), hitting 11% of volume by the fourth quarter. In contrast, the e-book market share for children’s books (0-12s) did not exceed 2% at any stage of the year. Overall, spending on children’s books fell 4% in 2012 if e-books were not taken into account, but matched spending in 2011 if e-books were included.

In 2012, e-books accounted for a higher-than-average share (when compared with fiction overall) of purchases in genres such as true crime, travel writing, humour and Mind, Body, Soul, but represented less than 7% in sales value of adult non-fiction volume overall.

Nearly one in eight books bought by females were e-books, compared to one in eleven books bought by males. The share of purchases accounted for by e-books was also higher among older than younger consumers, although those aged 30-44 bought more e-books than those from other equivalent-sized age groups.

While e-books accounted for a significant proportion of book purchases by those with tablets and dedicated e-Readers, the majority of the books bought by even these consumers in 2012 were still in print formats, while the majority of book buyers still didn’t own either a tablet or a dedicated e-Reader by the end of the year. The proportion of book buyers owning e-reading devices is sharply on the rise. Ownership of tablets overtook ownership of dedicated e-Readers after the release of the Kindle Fire in Autumn 2012 and ownership of Smartphones was reported by more than 50% of book buyers from the middle of 2012. Two thirds of book buyers owned at least one of these three types of device by the end of the year.

While fewer book buyers owned e-Readers than tablets or Smartphones by the end of 2012, most e-books were still bought for reading on a dedicated rather than a multi-function device. However, the e-Reader market share fell over the course of the year, and, for 2012 overall, was significantly lower among buyers of adult non-fiction and younger children’s books than for adult fiction and Young Adult books. One in twenty e-books purchased in 2012 was bought primarily to read on a Smartphone, rising to one in twelve of those bought for study, reference or work, and one in eight bought to read while commuting / travelling. The growth in e-book purchases in 2012 accelerated the switch from buying books in-person to online, with the latter’s share up from 36% to 42% of volume in 2012 alone, and doubling since 2008. However, bookshops remained well ahead of internet retailers for purchases of print books, in volume as well as value. The fact that internet-only businesses were ahead of bookshops in terms of overall volume therefore reflects their continued dominance in the e-book market, where they took a 95% share.

While bookshops were still ahead of internet-only retailers for print book purchases overall in 2012, the reverse was true for those who also bought -ebooks, suggesting that once consumers start to switch from print to digital formats, they also switch from bookshops to e-tailers for their remaining print book purchases. Just as they are buying more of their books online than offline, book buyers are also increasingly making use of online media, with more than 25% more using social media for news on a weekly basis in 2012 than reading printed newspapers, and slightly more engaging with online blogs / forums than with printed magazines.

Large numbers of book buyers are engaging with the various online and offline media. Browsing and previous readership of the author / series were the two most common sources of discovery, and the fifth of purchases derived from a recommendation / review were much more likely to come from family, friends, school or college than from the media.

When not using personal recommendations, book buyers aged 45+ tended to use printed newspaper and bookseller website reviews and e-mails as sources of book recommendation; social media and magazines were relatively more important drivers of discovery for book purchases among under 45s. Younger consumers were also more likely to find the books that they bought through adaptations and bestseller lists than those aged 45+.

Physical shops remain the leading source of discovery when it comes to browsing, with nearly twice as many book purchases found by browsing in shops than by browsing online in 2012. Browsing was equally as important to the discovery of e-books as printed books in 2012, whereas previous readership of author / series, reviews / recommendations, charts and adverts / trailers were all relatively more likely to have been used to find e-books than print books. Liking the author, series or characters in a book was the most commonly mentioned factor when it came to deciding which books to buy in 2012, ahead of interest in the subject or information contained in the book. The blurb and the ability to read an extract also ranked higher in terms of purchase influences for self-published books than for conventionally-published books.

What does this mean for authors? I’d say that the messages are pretty clear:

1. Make sure that your book is available in as many formats as possible. Even if you’re not keen on e-books yourself, recognise that this format has legs and is going places.
2. Cultivate your local bookshops (and libraries). Give generously of your time to help build your ‘brand’ as an author by appearing at events and workshops. Given the chance, booksellers and librarians will work hard for you. Appreciate what they do. Write and thank them afterwards.
3. Continue to maintain your profile on social media. Make sure that your readers get to know you as a person. Write something interesting on your blog every day, or as often as you can. Be generous in your praise of and help for others –booksellers, librarians, readers, fellow authors.
4. Don’t despair if at first the only people following you or reading your blog are friends and family. The research shows that, over time, they can have a powerful influence on your sales. Getting them to follow you and write comments on your blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts is like throwing a stone into a stream: over time, the ripples will spread out much further than you think.
5. If you are writing a series – say in the crime or fantasy genres – develop a following for your characters. Give them extra life on your social networking pages. Provide readers with tasters of your work-in-progress.
6. Create podcasts of yourself reading from your books. If you have the expertise yourself or can afford to pay for it, create a short trailer for your next book.
7. Finally, don’t forget your publisher. Co-operate with them as much as possible. When your publisher requests additional material – e.g., for Advance Information Sheets, promotional campaigns, questions for reading groups, etc., respond as soon as you can and put as much effort into it as possible. Tell your publisher when you are appearing at events, etc., so that they can help you with publicity. Understand that you and your publisher are in it together for the long haul and value the work that they do on your behalf. As the statistics show, if you persevere, you are likely to reap the rewards.

It’s the 15th of May and today Salt launches three of its highlight fiction titles for 2013: David Gaffney’s More Sawn-Off Tales, Alison Moore’s The Pre-War House and Other Stories and Alice Thompson’s new novel, Burnt Island.

In David Gaffney‘s follow up to his bestselling fiction collection Sawn-Off Tales, the author blurs fiction into poetry in this powerful collection of tender and extremely funny micro-stories. David is a featured author as part of National Flash Fiction Day (May 2013), and has a Guardian article on Flash Fiction appearing to coincide with the publication of this book. Read a review of More Sawn-Off Tales in The List.

Alison Moore shot to fame in 2012 following considerable media attention brought about by her novel, The Lighthouse, being shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, as well as the National Book Awards. The Lighthouse is followed up today with a major collection of short stories and a novella in the shape of The Pre-War House and Other Stories. Read F.C. Malby’s pre-publication review.

Burnt Island is the long-awaited sixth novel from Alice Thompson. Her previous books include: Justine (Canongate, 1996), Pandora’s Box (Little, Brown, 1998), Pharos (Virago, 2002), and The Existential Detective (Two Ravens Press, 2010). Alice Thompson’s writing has been shortlisted and won many awards over the years, including the prestigious James Tait Memorial Prize, which she won jointly with Graham Swift. Read a pre-publication review in The Scotsman and an interview in the Sunday Herald.

All three books are distributed by Turnaround and are available from all good bookstores now.

Meike Ziervogel’s debut novel, Magda, was published four weeks ago. Widely reviewed in the print and online media Salt caught up with the author to ask her what publication has meant.

Hello, Meike! Your book is now a month old, that’s often an intense, wonderful month for an author. What have been the highlight moments of the past four weeks?

This first month of  ‘Magda’ has been wonderful. I’m touched when people pay the book serious attention. So far I have received reviews in national papers – Sunday Times, Independent on Sunday, Guardian, Daily Mail, Independent, Metro – local papers, such as Lancashire Evening Post,  Student newspapers, such as the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell and quite a few book bloggers. In addition I’ve appeared on BBC’s Woman’s Hour, on Newstalk Radio Ireland and have been interviewed by a number of online sites.

What was it like to go to the BBC to take part in Woman’s Hour?

Woman’s Hour was my first live radio appearance. I prepared well but didn’t really know what to expect. To cut a long story short: It was wonderful, exhilarating and nerve-racking all at the same time. As I was on air, my heart was pounding so loud I could hardly hear my own voice. Jane Garvey was brilliant: professional, engaging and clearly involved in the book. At one point she said ‘‘I felt for this woman [i.e Magda Goebbels] in a way I would not have believed possible.’

You book has been very well reviewed in the media — online and in print, what have been your favourite comments from the critics?

Here my top three:

‘Ziervogel is the brave woman who set up Peirene Press five years ago … Her own debut novel displays similar nerve … This is an ambitious and queasily unsettling novel.’

DAVID MILLS, The Sunday Times

‘Challenging, clever, and fascinating as an insight into how generations of Germans are summoning the courage to address the horror of the last century.’

AMANDA CRAIG, Independent

 ‘Magda is a triumph of complex, cross-generational, feminist psychology, a spellbinding mix of fact and fiction… A daring and intelligent debut.’

PAM NORFOK, Lancashire Evening Post

You’re a successful publisher in your own right and we’re huge admirers of Peirene Press, what has it been like to work with another independent press?

A huge pleasure, Chris. When Jen made the offer for ‘Magda’ I knew she wanted to publish the book because she loved and understood the text, not because it fitted into some commercial ‘drawer’. What a thrilling affirmation for an author to receive. Then, right from the start, you, Jen and I were engaged in an exciting creative dialogue with a common goal: to make ‘Magda’ as successful as we can and give the book the best chance possible. As a publisher I know that publishing a book is a team effort. So many people contribute to the success of a book: writer, editor, proofreader, designer, marketing, PR, sales force. Working with you, makes me – the author – feel part of that team.

Can you tell us a little about how have reader’s responded to your book?

I love hearing readers’ reaction to my book. My job as a writer was to write it. Now the reader’s job is to react. I think the worst reaction for a writer is no reaction. Magda has already received many responses from readers. Some love it, others struggle with it. But what is truly exciting to see is that whoever reads it, reacts to the book. It touches them one way or the other. Makes them think. Makes them respond. As a writer you can’t wish for more.

Can you leave us with any hints about  your plans for the next book?

Magda is my fourth novella, but my first published book. There are recurring themes in all my books. My first two novellas, like Magda, deal with flawed mother-daughter relationships, while my third book expands on the notion of a woman who is seduced by an ideology – in this instance Islamic fundamentalism – and who eventually becomes a suicide bomber. The story I am working on now explores the husband-wife relationship of a mature couple. Again I am asking myself about the nature of love, this time between equals rather than parent and child and in the absence of any escapist ideology.

Meike, many thanks indeed for catching up with us and we wish you continued success with Magda.

The move will mean that the business will no longer be commissioning new single-author collections, though the press is not ruling out a return to publishing some in the future. Salt will continue to support and market its extensive backlist, as well as develop other poetry anthology projects.

Before the changes take effect, Salt will publish a further dozen new poetry collections, including several debuts and this year’s Crashaw Prize winner, Lydia Macpherson.

“There’s never been a better time for poets to write,” says Chris Hamilton-Emery. “There are huge opportunities for poets to publish in new ways — and there are scores of new presses emerging, too. It’s an exciting time. It’s also the right time for Salt to take a break from our work on individual collections — we’ve done a great deal over the past thirteen years — we want to concentrate our efforts on anthology publishing, where we support poets in raising their profile and reaching new readers.”

Some reviewers have likened your writing to that of P D James. I think this is particularly applicable to Almost Love, because it does not follow a certain modern trend for quick reads. This is certainly something I’ve noticed with travel books, when older accounts of crossing a country, like Peter Fleming’s ‘News From Tartary’, make it seem as if you can feel every stone trodden on, whereas modern travel books make it feel as if you’re on an express tour of an area.

It’s interesting you should say that, because I was recently on holiday in Barcelona and there are two Eyewitness guides to Barcelona, an ordinary Eyewitness guide and a compact one, of ten top things to do and see, and this was the one I bought, because I was going to be there for only three days. So I think you’re right, but I won’t buy short novels, because I just don’t think they’re worth the money! I can read a short novel in a couple of hours and that doesn’t seem worth nine pounds.

I have to agree that Almost Love isn’t a quick read, because the plot is complex and I want the reader to engage with that.

You have talked about Almost Love as different from In the Family. Would you like to explain what you mean by this?

Writers I really admire, like William Trevor, never write a novel in quite the same way twice. He writes an entirely new and different novel every time and that’s what I try to do, because I don’t want to fall into the trap of using more or less the same plot again, which many crime writers do in their second novel. I still wanted to use Spalding as the central place. The Archaeological Society in Almost Love, which is at the centre of the book, is based on Spalding Gentleman’s Society, a very famous scientific/historical club for gentlemen. It was founded in the seventeenth century by scholars and scientists, including Isaac Newton, who was of course a Lincolnshire man. When I was at school, I had the privilege, because I was doing an Archaeology A-level, of going to work there and helping them to classify stuff. As with In the Family, the novel is based on a central place. In In the Family, it is the shop; in Almost Love it is the Archaeological Society.

You must have done an enormous amount of research.

Yes, I did quite a lot of research; although I read history and archaeology and I’ve studied both of them (although not to the extent that I’ve studied English literature), it was necessary to check quite a lot of things.

How did you create a credible overlap between reality and fictional facts?

I suppose I’m able to do this because the story is based so closely on reality. All I’ve done is change dates and places. There hasn’t, for example, been anything like a Northern Rosetta Stone, but certainly different writings of different ancient societies have been found in the North. So there’s no reason why you should not find something that’s the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone in the Orkneys. I think that it would also have been credible for the archaeologist Dame Claudia McRae, who supposedly found the stone, to have gone to practise archaeology in Norway, a country considered to be a neutral country early on the war, though with people with Nazi tendencies. As this character was also well-connected and her father had influential friends, she could have got to Norway on a troopship, before the war started, if she’d wanted to. I try to make the situation credible by thinking about how she might have led the life she did.

I notice that DC Juliet Armstrong is coming into her own in Almost Love. She certainly seems very intelligent, because she is doing an enormous amount of the background research that is required for the case. What is interesting is the way she is now using very modern techniques for the research by searching the Internet and downloading academic papers where she can.

Juliet is mainly a desk-based policewoman, although she does go out sometimes and, when she does, she makes very good observations that will often really move the case on. Juliet is also able to pick up on discrepancies in Claudia McRae’s work. This probably comes from my own circumstances, in which I have to straddle two worlds, having to write both an academic paper and a popular piece of writing on the same subject at the same time. Also, some of those early archaeologists did write stuff that was completely unscientific in the eyes of today’s audience. It’s important to realise that they were little more than treasure hunters at that time, ripping straight through all foundations without taking any measurements or photographs, just to get at what they wanted. There was no attempt to preserve what they dug through, so they were mavericks in that respect.

The plot is amazingly challenging, but highly enjoyable because of the way you drop breadcrumbs along the way. We talked about the issue of continuity last time, so have you changed your approach to how you construct a plot?

I’m afraid I made the same mistake as I did last time, in that I wrote sections of it out of sequence. It seems to happen to me now and again because I want to alternate chapters, because that makes it more interesting to the reader. It does cause problems and I have a lot of alterations to do myself to make sure I get everything in the right chronological order. Even so, it is still possible to miss some things and this is where a good editor comes in.

It’s difficult, as a writer, to remember exactly when you have introduced an idea or concept, because you’ve got the whole lot in your head and it all seems very familiar to you. You’re just too close to it, I suppose.

As with In The Family, I did write a long outline for Almost Love, on holiday in France in 2011. Obviously I wasn’t doing it all of the time, but it did take me the best part of two weeks. I did stick pretty closely to that original plan. When I write outlines, I do find myself writing a bit of the book anyway, so I must impose some self-discipline for the next one, because it makes life difficult for me and for the people who edit me when I write like this.

It’s interesting you say that, because I know how busy you are and I wondered how you’d had enough time to write this book.

This issue of time management actually came up at a presentation I did at a bookshop in London recently. There was a period last autumn, from about the end of September to the end of November, where I could do no writing of the novel at all, because I was doing so many other things. The Frankfurt Book Fair came right in the middle of this period and I also run a librarian advisory group, so I had to go immediately to Berlin after Frankfurt. I was getting pretty twitchy by the time it got to the end of November. Then, when I started writing again in December, it wasn’t that easy to get going on it again. I don’t share the view that you should write a thousand words a day. On some occasions, you do find yourself writing rubbish! I try to guard against this, as I don’t want to paint myself into a corner that I hadn’t planned for. I have to be a good self critic, but it’s difficult.

So there is no doubt a good editor is invaluable?

Yes, especially to pick up the inconsistencies I was talking about. It’s something that afflicts all writers, I think, so perhaps I’m in very auspicious company as far as this particular trait is concerned. For example, it is incredibly easy to change the name of one of your characters, particularly a minor character. For example, I spelt the name Macfadyen in two different ways; I also called this policeman Ricky for most of the time, but then, oddly, I changed it to Ray. This was something that the editor picked up. A good editor has to be very vigilant, because missing something like that might seriously affect the plot.

Compared to In the Family, in which the crime had occurred and the police were investigating it, Almost Love has not only a crime but also an underlying sinister threat to people who are in the story. How did you create a sense of disquiet with the affair that occurs early on Almost Love?

I wanted the female secretary Alex to be a sympathetic character, because she is the central character of the book, but one who makes mistakes. The affair was a device in some ways, because Alex is the chatelaine of the Archaeological Society. There have to be reasons why she lets down her guard, although she is very good at her job. Another reason for choosing to use the affair was that, if it hadn’t been something like that, I should have probably needed to introduce more violence. I kept the violence to a minimum because I’m not into blood-and-guts writing at all. I may write crime novels, but I’m not into chapter and verse about how people get injured and prefer to keep the violence offstage. There are obviously gruesome finds, but how the perpetrator went about crimes is left to the reader to deduce.

I noticed that, where you had chapters with a bit of action going on, the chapter length was quite short. Chapters were longer when you introduced background detail and explanation. Was that intentional?

I write more psychological crime than action crime. I did, in fact, make a later scene initially more graphic, and longer, but I edited it considerably, partly because I was uncomfortable with being more explicit about the violence and partly in response to the feedback of one of my readers on Twitter and Facebook; my style of writing has enabled her to come back to crime writing after she had tired of too much explicit violence in many modern crime thrillers. I am always prepared to listen to readers’ opinions, especially, of course, when their comments chime with my own feelings.

Coming back to the psychological aspect my writing, exploring people’s thoughts and attitudes is, in my view, far more interesting than violence, which is, after all, just violence; there’s nothing else to say about it really.

Your writing really lends itself to making a reader interested in the key characters’ lives as well as the crime is going on. Is this deliberate?

Yes, it is. The other thing that’s also deliberate is not tying up all the loose ends. I like to leave the readers guessing as to what exactly happened. Most of the denouement is looking at the case through Juliet’s eyes, because she has deduced a substantial amount of the case; I make it clear that it’s the best account we’re likely to get and we don’t necessarily know what happened and never will do.

There was a considerable amount of information that you needed to put over in order for readers to start building up their own views of what was going on. There is always this mantra of ‘show not tell’ – not easy, because you were having to describe what was in the academic papers that Juliet and Katrin were having to read. How much effort did you have to put in to those sections to make sure they didn’t go on for any longer than they needed to?

I am very conscious that writers who have done an enormous amount of research into something then insist on putting it in their book. I might find myself doing that more if I weren’t handling subjects I’m already familiar with; if I had to write about something I knew nothing about, such as football, I might parade the knowledge a bit more. History and archaeology are part of my background, because I did both of them at school and have continued to read books on them. It was just a question of checking details to make sure I got them right. I hope I managed to provide just enough of them without parading the knowledge too much.

What did come over was how credible the meetings of the Archaeological Society seemed to be.

I took the approach that committee or board meetings are the same the world over. You do get quite a bit of in-fighting and some very interesting dynamics occurring in these meetings.

You talked about feedback earlier. You do use social networking quite a bit to engage with your readers. So, as a writer, has your use of social networking been helpful in getting to know your readers?

Absolutely. I was very sceptical about social networking when Chris Hamilton-Emery, my publisher, first suggested I use it. But I find that it is great for getting feedback from readers, and I’ve also found my blog invaluable, because it makes me write every day. I do try to keep a diary, but the trouble with keeping a diary is that you tend to write the same things over and over again. For example, in a typical day, I get up, take the dog out for a walk, do some writing and then get on and do my other work; in the evening, I do some reading or revise the writing that I wrote earlier in the day. A diary would record this repetitively, whereas, when you’re writing a blog, you’ve got to write something different every day or lose your audience, and that’s really good practice and a challenge for any writer; you have to revise and perfect. The blog posts are probably not as carefully wrought as my writing in the novels, because there are time pressures, but I do try to craft the material on the blog so that readers will enjoy it. Getting feedback about those posts, as well as direct feedback about the books themselves, is very valuable to me and very encouraging. Mostly people write encouragingly positive things and only occasionally something less so!

Many congratulations to Gee Williams for her shortlisted in the fiction category of the 2013 Wales Book of the Year!

A Girl’s Arm is a collection of stories homing in on the pressure points in the lives of its characters. Although a mixed bag from a variety of backgrounds — an apparently nerveless woman rock climber, a young classicist on the academic make, an estranged son just dropping by after many years — with a couple of exceptions they would be classed as ‘ordinary’. The stories focus on that single extraordinary event from which the course of his or her particular narrative veers off and they are offered the chance to become what they were meant to be. It can lead in many cases to prospering after aridity, or as in the title story, to a demonic hatching.

The Annual General Meeting of the Publishers Association took place at Bloomsbury House on 8th May. Salt Publishing has just joined the PA and was present at the AGM for the first time.

Ursula Mackenzie, the outgoing President, said that the most exciting thing about the UK publishing industry was the extraordinary growth that it has enjoyed over the past year. Turnover is up by 4%, fiction sales by 30% and digital sales by 40%. The export market is booming. The publishing sector contributes £4.8 bn to UK plc. This is despite the flatlining economy in the UK and Europe and signs that sales in the developing world are slowing down.

It is important that when the publishing community goes to the government it can represent itself as a successful sector that deserves support. This was part of the intention behind the prominent role that the industry adopted during the 2012 Olympics. The maintenance of a healthy public author / publisher dialogue brings the dynamics of the industry to the fore and gives authors the chance to talk to their local MPs about copyright, the importance to them of public libraries, etc. Dame Janet Finch’s work on Open Access, which was supported by the industry, offered a textbook example of how the industry and government could co-operate productively. There are ongoing talks with the Department of Education about the provision of curriculum resources. The PA is working with UK investment to promote the use of UK educational resources around the world. Although it is not always possible for the PA to adopt a positive stance, it makes it clear that publishers are often the first movers in government-proposed initiatives – for example, as well as Open Access, e-book lending and data text mining.

A positive agenda is important because it works alongside areas which need protection. As well as bringing almost £5bn of revenues to the country, publishing provides direct employment for 30,000 people, promotes academic excellence and, through its support of World Book day and World Book Night and the Book Trust, supports literacy initiatives. A trade association provides a collective voice and allows things to be said which might otherwise be missed. The PA is much better at collaboration than it used to be. It has a brilliant team which reaches out across the sector.

Nick Fowler, the incoming President, thanked Ursula Mackenzie for being a strong role model. Picking up her theme of collaboration, he said that it is vital that the PA works to link together elements of the sector. The industry is facing strong headwinds and needs to demonstrate that it is dynamic, innovative and receptive to change. Challenges include the weak economy, a chorus of ‘it’s digital, so it should be free’, the recent onslaught on copyright and the effect of all of these things on the consumer sector. The headwinds mean that it’s all the more important to set out the parameters of change. The publishing industry helps other parts of the economy to function more effectively and independently. Maintaining copyright is key: copyright is an enabler, not an inhibitor. There is a need to keep pushing this message and to keep on telling the story to the wider media. It is important to ensure that the value provided by the industry is broadly understood.

Will 2013 be the year in which digital textbooks really take off at universities? Will the growth of sales of the Android and Lexis tablets change the shape of trade publishing? Will the challenge to copyright that is currently happening in Canada have a knock-on effect here? The anti-piracy portal has already been effective in combatting another threat to the industry.

Nick Fowler welcomed Dominic Knight of Palgrave Macmillan as the new Vice-President. He said that Dominic’s appointment represented a break with tradition: the PA now wants its Council to consist of members of multiple publishing sub-sectors. All are united by striving to disseminate works as broadly as possible through investment, including investment in digital, and nurturing authors.

Presenting the PA’s Annual Report, Richard Mollet, the PA’s CEO, said that 2012 had been an incredibly busy year. Nearly 100 meetings had taken place with politicians in Westminster, Whitehall and Brussels. There had been countless media briefings. PA officials had attended breakfasts, seminars and events in fourteen countries. The focus was on building many partnerships. Publishing, in which the PA is a participant, sits in the middle of a huge, vibrant ecosystem. The PA’s ability to deliver success for its members depends on collaboration.

Richard went on to highlight some of the most important initiatives in which the PA has been engaged. Emma House has been instrumental in providing support to the Reading Agency and information exchange with the public library service. The PA has forged stronger links with the Association of Authors’ Agents, the BA and the Society of Authors, particularly with its contribution to the Sieghart Review of e-lending. Work with the BA will continue with the Books Are My Bag initiative.

The PA is working more closely with the IPG on issues relating to SME publishers (like Salt). It is making sure that small businesses are at the heart of the agenda when talking to government. It contributes to the Federation of European Publishers and the International Publishers Association, both of which are maintaining a close watching brief on intellectual property. It is enormously grateful for the work done by Richard Charkin, Executive Director at Bloomsbury, who acts as its representative on both bodies. It has engaged more fully with the issues facing print challenged people, especially by working with Helen Gunsekara at the RNIB.

It is taking a close look at workforce development and the skills needed to take publishing into the future. A sub-group of the council is engaged in improving the website with a view, among other things, to strengthen outreach to the body of publishing education – especially the eleven, soon to be twelve, bodies that now offer an MA in Publishing. It is working closely with the Publishers Training Centre to improve skills.

In the academic arena, the PA is working with ALPSP and the STM on copyright, Open Access and data and text mining. It is working with Jacks Thomas, the CEO of the London Book Fair, on its international programme, and helps the ministerial aspects of this run as smoothly as possible. It is part of the Alliance for Intellectual Property, which consists of 25 trade associations whose members together bring £35bn to the economy. Its work includes protecting trademarks and combatting counterfeit. The Alliance has set up contentmap.com, which lists all the legal services available to those wishing to use material in copyrighted books and games. The Creative Coalition Campaign brings it into contact with, among others, trades unions and the Labour Party.

Mark Wharton works as the PA’s representative at BPI, the Federation Against Copyright Theft. Now that it is possible to prepare figures on online infringement, they are startling. In 2012, work on the Copyright Hub began. This is being led by Sarah Faulder of the PLS and Kevin FitzGerald of the CLA. The Copyright Hub has the ability to change the dynamics of online licensing.

Richard Mollet concluded by saying that, where it can possibly avoid it, the PA ploughs no furrows alone. The most important relationship of all that it develops is between the secretariat and its members.

The keynote speech

The keynote speech at the PA’s AGM was entitled Publishing in the Age of Electronics, and was delivered by Bill Thomson, Head of Partnership Development at the BBC Digital Archive.

Bill Thomson was a larger than life but seminally thoughtful speaker. He described himself as ‘fundamentally a hack and a pundit’. He said that, in essence, human beings don’t inhabit a digital world – we won’t be absorbed into the machine, ever. But ours is an electronic age. We are living in a society that is as dependent on the capability of devices as electricity and coal were to our ancestors. Interestingly, these old dependencies still exist: they are not being replaced by new ones. We are just gathering more dependencies. Daily life is increasingly defined by the technology that we carry around. The things that technology can do are astonishing. Thomson said that, looking back, he was surprised that as a student in 1984 he was so uninterested in technology. At the time the Internet just did a basic job. Now its variety is fascinating. However, it can also act as a distraction from the underlying reality of our businesses and what we do. He said that, because of this, he would welcome a time when it was ‘just part of the mainstream’; but that time isn’t with us yet.

Publishers have lots of lessons to learn from what other industries are doing and lots of individual initiatives that they can share with each other. Bill Thomson regards himself as atypical – he says that he buys every device – but thinks that he is a ‘useful subject for study’. In his role as a writer, he often tells people what to do; but on this occasion he would not try that, because there are already so many people telling publishers what they should do that they are confused about what course to take. He presented himself as ‘someone whose life has been shaped by the products of your industry in an incredibly deep way’, and also someone who makes great use of electronic tools.

He said that reading is of profound importance to society. Kids are taught to read so that they can share the products of scholarship and learning. This need won’t go away. What will change is how we get access to the information. Our children and grandchildren may have less attachment to the physical object than we do.

People have called publishers who are reluctant to embrace digital ‘Luddites’ and ‘dinosaurs’. His view is that this is mistaken, because it unjustly gives Luddites and dinosaurs a bad press. The Luddites in fact used advanced technology; what concerned them was the importation of new technology that failed to maintain their standards of manufacture. Being a Luddite is therefore a good thing. They believed in social justice and the power of the technology that they used.

Similarly, crocodiles have barely changed over the past 200 million years, whereas dinosaurs were fortunate enough to evolve in ways that allowed them to diversify; their nearest living relatives are birds. Dinosaur thinking is creative thinking. Publishers should therefore also be proud to be called dinosaurs.

All of this matters because we are at such an early stage of digital technology that we can’t begin to imagine what the ultimate end product might look like. Networks are continually becoming faster, devices smaller, storage cheaper. These developments hold implications for online distribution. Mobile access is similarly getting cheaper, easier, more high-speed. Developing countries will leap-frog to 4G networks. We’re going to be connected to everyone, everywhere. Google has invented Google Glasses – spectacles which operate as a projection device. The privacy implications of this are enormous. Google is now working on the second generation of this product. It is very keen to promote it. Everything picked up by these devices goes into the Google servers – ‘but they look after the information they’ve gathered really, really well’. [No irony intended, obviously!]

Similarly, driverless cars are now being developed. The implications are huge. Not only will they save fuel, but they will reshape cities. There will be no car parks. Modern cities have been shaped by the invention of the internal combustion engine, but this will change. 3D printers are already in existence. Instead of buying a screw or a widget, it is now possible to download the spec and print it out for assembly at home. What will this do to the small parts industry?

Soon screens will be everywhere. More and more we live in what Thomson calls the ‘liminal space’ – somewhere between the real and the virtual. Giving something ‘continuous partial attention’ becomes the default way of living, because so much of what we daily engage in happens on the other side of the screen.

However, all of these media forms are not coming together in ‘one bucket of bits’. We are seeing many forms of creative expression adapting to take account of these new media forms. There is the potential for each to be specialised and to survive in its own niche.

We are in the middle of a discovery process that is as exciting as what happened when Caxton’s printing press was invented. Interestingly, the convergence of digital devices appears to be cyclic. The convergence of media capabilities is usually one way. Once you can read a book on a screen, all screens will be capable of having books read on them. This happens because of things in the ecosystem that are beyond our control.

What does this mean for publishers? There are three main areas of publishing activity: music, film and publishing as represented by the publishing industry. Music is an art form that happens to have had an industry grow up around it; film is a medium (and is still called ‘film’, though film as a product has become obsolete); publishing defines itself as an industry. It sits between the writer and the reader. It sits between creative output and its audience. As the possibilities of introducing readers to writing are unpicked, what is it that publishers then do? Is it just an historical accident that printed matter for the past 300–400 years has relied on the printed page?

As we move to the second stage of digital development, will publishing as an industry diminish? Will the exploitation of technology take publishers in different directions? Might it become fragmented and no longer called publishing as such?

Bill Thomson said that he had no answers, but offered this as something to reflect on. How do and how will words get into the mind of the reader? Elsevier’s purchase of Mendeley, Faber’s creation of the Alliance may not tell individual publishers what they should be doing themselves. There are no good models to take publishers on to the next stage: there is only the certainty of change and the possibility that, through understanding, you can help to shape that change.

Publishers will need to summon all their creative energy. One big change will be the move from physical to digital. Previously unavoidable constraints will now become choices. There is no such thing as a used MP3 or a second-hand e-book. [Some of the publishers present took issue with this statement in conversations over lunch afterwards. Demand for ‘used digital’ is already being voiced in the retail sector.] Whilst legal mechanisms to protect copyright are common and commonly enforced, if they make the transition fit with what shareholders want (as opposed to what consumers know), as representatives of the wider universe, publishers will experience problems, because the universe may not require what they want. The issues surrounding this are real, and worrying. The Copyright Hub may not go far enough to solve the problems. Digital Rights Management software [DRM] is unpopular; but it is extremely difficult to protect e-books from piracy. Something is not working here if authors are to be paid. [Again, some of the audience disagreed with this in later conversations; as an industry outsider, Bill Thomson – understandably – did not seem to be entirely au fait with the latest thinking about DRM.]

There are many other issues to consider – what is happening to bookshops, for example. In some of the factors – e.g., the death of the High Street – publishers are small players, and therefore it is difficult for them to have any influence. The question for booksellers may be simply how they can stay afloat.

Thomson said that it is not to say that there will be no bookshops [although some booksellers might not agree with this relatively optimistic pronouncement], but a question of what world bookshops will exist in and how we can make sure that they thrive in that world. Again, there are no good models, but lots of interesting examples.

One important thing to understand is that you should do what you do well. Cnut knew that he could not turn back the tide, but he had PR people who told him that he could. The real danger for publishers is that they will think that they can do things that they can’t, because either they aren’t listening properly or people will tell them lies. They need to understand what they do well and to choose which battles to fight; and then develop tools to fight those battles.

Bigger than the debate on DRM is that of how people value creative works. Having debate on how to achieve the desired outcome is key. It is about territories as much as anything: how to preserve differential pricing and territorial solutions in a world without DRM.

Thomson offered the analogy of the water-mill. There are few water-mills in this country, though we eat a lot of bread and therefore use a lot of flour. There is a real danger that the publishing industry likes making water-mills more than it likes making flour. Publishers need to think about how to become bread-makers, not mill-makers. This means putting works into the hands of readers to create something that readers can engage with.

At present, the publishing industry is focusing its abilities on how to deal with copyright. It needs to develop other skills. Amazon built an infrastructure too big for its needs and then hired out the superfluous bits to make money until it needed them. It realised that it had a core competence with a financial value for hiring out. As publishers, you do many more things than are represented by core competences. StoryLine could have come from a publisher; but it didn’t. There are things happening within the industry that could be very exciting, but you don’t see them because you are focused on copyright.

Sadly, publishers no longer own the gold-mines. The gold-rush has started in the Amazonian hills. The danger is that the publishing industry will act like the diamond industry and restrict access to push up value. It might get away with it for a while: but the flood of digitisation will come. Publishers should profit from the gold-rush by thinking about what they do in a different way: Pearson Dynamite Sticks; Simon and Shovel; Hachette Hatchets; Random Tents!

Publishers must find opportunities, engage with creative diversification and – crucially – put money behind it. They must understand the broader environment, so that the very hard decisions they have to make are based on information. It is a world of tremendous opportunities. Someone is going to have to give us more stuff to read, because we are a reading species.

Join Alison Moore launching The Pre-War House and Other Stories

Wednesday 15 May 2013, 7 p.m.

Waterstones

1/5 Bridlesmith Gate
Nottingham NG1 2GR

CROMER, UK (Salt Publishing) — We are delighted to announce that Kirsty Logan has won this year’s Scott Prize for Short Stories with her collection, The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales. She will be published in November 2013.

Author photo © Monkeytwizzle

Kirsty Logan is a fiction writer, literary editor, columnist and book reviewer. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in around 80 anthologies and magazines, recorded for podcasts, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and exhibited in galleries.

Kirsty regularly performs at events and festivals around the world; recent performances include London, Copenhagen, and Brussels. As a Hawthornden Fellow, she recently spent a month on a writing retreat in a 17th century castle, working on her novel The Gracekeeper about a circus boat in a flooded world.

As well as writing fiction, Kirsty also co-edits flash fiction magazine Fractured West, writes articles for IdeasTap; works as the literary editor for The List, and writes a regular column on the X-Files for The Female Gaze.

Kirsty is 29 and lives in Glasgow. She has a semicolon tattooed on her toe. She likes strong coffee, children’s ghost stories, electronica, retold fairy-tales, and the sea.

Many congratulations to her and to the other shortlisted authors:

Alistair Daniel (UK) – Marriage à la Mode

April L. Ford (USA) – The Poor Children

Jane Hammons (USA) – A Place Called Beautiful

Jenny Holden (UK) – Flexitime

Hilary Hughes (UK) – Word Salad

Dan Powell (UK) – Looking Out of Broken Windows

Leone Ross (UK) – Lipstick, Lighters, Pens & Porn

Colette Sartor (USA) – Kinship, Friendship, and Other Afflictions

Peter Vilbig (USA) – Signal Boom Signal Crash

Jill Widner (USA) – A Green Raft on a Muddy Swell

A bit about Kirsty Logan:

1. Where did the book begin for you, how did the book come to be written?
I’ve been working on the collection, on and off, for about three years. Sometimes stories begin from life: the title story, ‘The Rental Heart’, came from being dumped by a headfuck girl I was crazy about; one of the shorter pieces, ‘Bibliophagy’, is about my father’s storuggles with addiction and mental health. I’m inspired by art and music, too: ‘Underskirts’ was inspired by a painting I saw in Amsterdam, ‘Portrait of Guus Preitinger’ by Kees van Dongen; ‘Coin-Operated Boys’ came from a Dresden Dolls song.

2. What was going on in your life while you were writing it?
Daydreaming, sea-gazing, night-scribbling, and getting my heart broken, all over the course of several years.

3. What do you think were the real driving elements within the book — the things that moved it all forward for you?
I’m a writer, so I write. I don’t know how to do anything else.

4. How long did it take to bring it all together?
The oldest story was written about three years ago, and the most recent six months ago.

5. Who was important to you in developing your writing life?
Both my parents have been incredibly supportive of my writing, and helped me to develop ambition, calm, and a faith in myself.

6. Where do you think you’ll go to next in your writing — what are you working on now?
I’m working on a novel, The Gracekeeper, about a circus boat in a flooded world. I’m also working on another short story collection, The Girl With the Most Cake, inspired by the songs of the Hole album Live Through This.

Kirsty’s Retreat