PARTY

I'm going to a posh party tonight (The Wallace Collection to celebrate Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize for Literature) and I think I will not know many people, but at least Gary Pulsifer of Arcadia will be there and has promised to rescue me. It's one that the establishment of publishing will be at in force, and they have little idea of how the independents survive and spend their time.

So, in my handbag are a pair of very high plum suede shoes which I share with my sixteen year old daughter (we have the same size feet exactly) - except she can walk in them and I can't really. On GMTV this morning I caught a glimpse of a competition they are doing for Mother and Daughter modelling contracts. There was Jerry Hall with Georgia Jagger - hmm I think, Georgia should be doing her mocks today. I think it was a pre recorded clip though. Somehow I don't think my daughter and I will be competition - for a start I am nowhere near five foot eight.

All day, I've battled to find a 300 dpi image for the cover of Feather Man - eventually located - imported into InDesign and print quality cover PDF exported. Kit is in Argentina, Rebecca is recording two songs on XFM radio with her band, and Alice is in next week, so I'm alone here. Good news is that a bank transfer of what Publishers Weekly would call a 'nice' five figure sum arrived and is now safely in our UK bank account. So we're OK for a while, BUT the Spring books are key - The Concubine of Shanghai by Hong Ying is due from the printers on Monday and we have 5000 advance orders. That, for an independent, is bloody brilliant.

Catheryn

New covers and eclectic philosophy

Eagle eyed website visitors will have noticed that The Concubine of Shanghai has changed her spots. It has gone from this:

to this:


The work of our previously mentioned new designer. That is Hong Ying herself on the cover. Yet another one of our authors with the ability to leave me red faced and toungue tied.

Much better to stay hidden reading eclectic philosophy. Upon which subject there was a review of Blue Sky Thoughts in the Guardian last weekend.
And I'm on holiday for a week, yay! January was a month in which we had the full complement of people for just a single day.
Kit

Catalogues, as far as the eyes can see...

We have a new catalogue! It came in on Friday, and went out the next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And is, indeed, still going out. To make the arrival even more nerve racking we got a last minute phone call from the printer on the day they were supposed to be printing saying he thought we'd got our measurements wrong. Now 'twas I who did those measurements originally so if 3000 copies of our most important sales tool were about to turn up unusable, it was going to be squarely my fault. My hands actually shook before cutting into the first box.

They were fine.* Good even. Striking, different, one hopes. The front cover depicts the image from Banquet of Lies with definitions of translation (reflection, combination,transformation) written colourfully in our new designer Alice's (I wonder if she'd like to blog? I'll ask next week) sprightly hand. Inside you will find interviews with not our front list authors BUT our frontlist translators. The spearhead of our efforts to publicize the importance of translated fiction.

The week was of course spent sending them to everyone we know, the Big List came out, the one that in theory everyone we meet gets added to immediately that it seems to us they might be interested. And then it was the monotony of take, open,shove, 2 militres saliva, 10 grams pressure, address, 10 more grams pressure, stamp (the royal kind), stamp (the ink kind), flick of the wrist. This last because rather than piling envelopes up neatly it seems far more fun to see how high a pile of envelopes can be built from two and a half metres away. I find this fun because I am a boy. I think Rebecca, who is not, found it thoroughly annoying.

And so now they're out. All except foreign ones and all the people who were left off the Big List. Should anyone find themselves in this unfortunate situation please let us know and we'll flick a copy thuswards.

Some news:

The splendiferous Vulpes Libris have done a review of This May Help You Understand the World , which is still doing very well.

The Spectator gave a brief mention to The Bookaholics Guide... in an article on books on the internet.

And on Monday, hopefully, we welcome back Catheryn. Whose birthday it was yesterday, should anyone like to send us cake. We can offer impeccably measured translation themed catalogues in return.

Kit

*It is, of course, unlikely that if there had been a problem, I would have mentioned it on the blog. I'd be cowering in shame somewhere, probably curled up under something, making a plan to fix things somehow.

Cheerful and at home!

It's been raining all day and the garden has had a moving show of squirrels, pigeons, jays and thrushes, in addition to very noisy foxes last night, which makes a pleasant change from the view of the Wormwood Scrubs playing fields from the Hammersmith Hospital which has been my view for the past week.

So, on the mend now, and blasting instructions by phone to the hapless Rebecca, Kit and Alice, but we have books to get to press very shortly and every tiny details matters.

So, what did I read over eight long days in my ward prison? Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn, Stephen Clarke's A Year in the Merde, On Chesil Beach (do I need to tell you who it is by?) and a good chunk of Affluenza by Oliver James. The quiz at the start of Affluenza is interesting - and you will have to go find a copy to be enlightened, but I ticked YES to the first five boxes and then NO to all the rest. I think I can honestly say I have never had envy of anyone else's material possessions which I did not have the ability to obtain if I really wanted to. Lucinda Bruce's Aga photos in our new book, Victoria and Lucinda's Flavour of the Month is the closest I've got to it. So I do not think I am affected by the affluenza virus, but I love reading about it.

A Year in the Merde did make me laugh even though Stephen Clarke deserved to get some come uppance for his attitude to les femmes, and if this is how the French see us and how we see the French, then goodness knows how we have managed to co exist in this part of the world for so long. Do I see a battle of tea bags being lopped from Hastings at the French coast, only to have a volley of Cantal cheeses come back at us? Who knows.

I kept the Waterstone's 3/2 stickers on my books through my stay, so the huge amount of people passing my bed could see a) what good value books are and b) how unbored I was compared to the blank, head nodding people in most of the other beds. What a strange world! Books are the only way to fully engage your brain, relax your mind and body and survive, I think, and no screen, kindle or gadget comes close. We need a really, really good publicity campaign to encourage reading - all positive and full of bright colours and interesting thoughts and quotes. Come on Arts Council, government, whoever, it's all there for the taking! Publishers would co operate, and everyone would benefit.

Catheryn

If publishing didn't involve the production of books then one could get a lot done...

We're down one boss.

She's being very brave about a longer than expected stay in hospital, but it sounds horrible. Hopefully she'll be back next week or the one after.

Which means that there's a lot more to do around here, as, factoring in the importance of respective jobs, she makes up about 80% of the workforce.

But we're coping, it's just that I haven't got to a single New Year Email (You know the kind: all the ideas you've had whilst away, people you've realised you haven't contacted for a while, etc.) yet. Let alone a proper New Year Blog. Why do people insist that the books they buy include poncy things like punctuation, spelling and formatting? Ifbookswerejustbigblocksoftextmylifewouldbesomucheasier.* The editorial equivalent of Duplo.

Some more reviews; Two more for The Bookaholics' Guide:


Monsters and Critics

and

Curled Up.com

and one for Enlightenment

at the wonderful

Vulpes Libris


As always, we appreciate all coverage.

*I am being facetious. Please do not startsubmittingbigblocksoftextasIvaluemysanity.

Still busy...

By the time we've got through everything that needs to be done it'll be a new year all over again...

But here's some stuff:

Stewart at Booklit wrote a review of The Devil in the Flesh a little while back now. Apologies to Stewart for taking so long to flag it up, the whole process of getting him the books was far more difficult than it might have been. I reused an Amazon package that we had lying around the office only to receive it back a couple of weeks later after the post office had delivered it to Amazon rather than Stewart, Amazon kindly sending it back to us with a question mark. I now no longer reuse Amazon packages, which is a pity because they are potentially very useful. Oh, and when Stewart eventually did receive the package he pointed out that I had sent him different books to the ones that he'd asked for. Not at my best there.

There is an interesting post by the bibliophilic blogger about Witold Gombrowicz who needs an author page, although he uses a pretty old version of the cover of Pornografia , our one's much better:


and back to texts and alignments and covers and deadlines and catalogues and printers and authors and deadlines and indesign and sales and deadlines...

Kit

Happy New Year!

The only problem with holidays is all the work waiting for you when you get back...

But we've waited far too long to mention that the wonderful bookanine website Vulpes Libris has an interview with our MD Catheryn here.

Hopefully they'll be doing some reviews of our stuff later on this year as well.

I'd write more but it's late and I'm whining. Tomorrow hopefully.

Kit

Catheryn here. It's been a while since I blogged - my excuses are a flying visit to New York and Boston for our sales conference with Consortium, and a battle with my gall bladder, although in early January I have surgery after a four month wait. Yippee! I could write a book on the NHS, an institution starved of resources which we all rely on.

So, here is a little record of the Christmas messages which have pleased us the most. Firstly, a lovely embossed Moleskin notebook from the Hay Festival. The Hay Festival has been key in the making of our authors reputations - first, they agreed to take Elif Shafak when no one knew who she was, and she stunned an audience of 500 and has never looked back. Then Maureen Freely went this year, and loved it so much she stayed for five days (sorry Faber, I think you got the lion's share of a whopper of a hotel bill), and this year we hope to send Rhyll McMaster to Hay, to talk about Feather Man.

Today we had an email Christmas card from Waterstone's - yea! Retailers appreciate independent publishers! We certainly appreciate retailers, so it's good to feel loved back. Next, my HUGE desk diary from Haynes, who have just had their first order from us for printing. Now, I like cars as much as most women do (they are not exactly the stuff of my wildest dreams), and I am the only driver in my house, so I'm not sure what do with the monthly drawings of the innards of the Ford Zodiac etc, but the Appointments schedule at the back will be invaluable for book fairs. My computer crashed irrevocably one September and I had to painstakingly recreate my Frankfurt schedule from memory as I had not printed it out - never again!

So, have a HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR, all you booky people out there.

Party!!

Christmas party that is, ours, tonight. Now, this may sound a rather optimistic proposition for an office of three people BUT not only are we now FOUR ( A new designer, we'll be able to show some examples of her work soon...), we invite other people to bring the numbers up to a jolly party.

And it's been a good year: Chocolate and Zucchini, Enlightenment, Four Walls, Touba and the Meaning of Night,thelistgoesonletsjustsayourbooks... all did well in very different ways and over an extended period of time, and This May Help You Understand the World is rocking around the Christmas tree at the moment. But even more exciting is the feeling that if this year was good, the next (touch wood)... could be... (are you still touching wood?) Great. Here's hoping...

Some odds and ends:

There is a new Pauline Kael author page as I mentioned.

A dialogue between two young women heard on the tube (commuting, I am currently discovering, is rather wonderful for catching up on both backlist and submissions, although it's hard to carry A4 sheets and a coffee at the same time. They sometimes end up entwined.):

'What did you think?'
'Yeah, I really liked it.'
'Really!?'
'Yeah, I really like it when people take history and then make it into a story, and that's what you've done'

At which point I reached my stop. I think I shall call it the discovery of the historical novel.

And thanks to 3AM and the British Council for their very different but equally enjoyable Christmas parties.

Kit

Stockhausen RIP

The sad news came over the weekend that Karlheinz Stockhausen has died. Fan or not, there's no doubt that he was one of the most distinctive figures in 20th Century music. he inspired many very different kinds of musicians and his electronic experimentation was especially innovatory.
Here's our author page and here's our book Stockhausen on Music.

Functioning at 65%...cough...64...cough...63...

The office is riddled with coughs and splutters today but too much has been going on recently not to leave some kind of post.

Firstly TV. Yes, that's right, we've got writers on it. Channel Fives' Cooking the Books kindly hosted two of our newest recruits: Victoria and Lucinda. Much excitement in the run up to this: hairdressers were visited and the phrase 'glammed up' used. You'll be able to see the results on Boxing Day 2007.

Secondly Maureen Freely took part in an event with Martin Amis and Ed Hussain on Monday night, a 650 seat sell out. Of course, the event was lent much of its piquancy by the fact that Amis has recently been portrayed as attacking all muslims everywhere – a story too eye catching to be dulled by looking at what the man actually said.
The event sounds like it was a good evening: a couple of accounts by those who were actually there:

Prospect Magazine

and
Liberal Conspiracy

and also Maureen's own account.


And thirdly: Congratulations to Clotilde Dusoulier whose Chocolate and Zucchini won the Best French Cuisine book in the UK section of Gourmand magazine's World Cook Book Awards 2007.

Kit

Marion Boyars' Australian adventure

Not that any of us are actually going. There is, however, a web page. The people who are going are Clotilde Dusoulier and Maureen Freely who will be attending the Perth writers festival. Both are getting good reviews already which for a writer would I imagine be the best kind of welcome. And then there's Rhyll McMaster, who is of course, lives there and already got great reviews . Which reminds me, I should do an author page for her.

And for Pauline Kael who, fruit bat* eared listeners will have heard lauded on the Today programme this morning as one of the great critics in times past. The point of the interview being that there are no great critics in times present. The fellow speaking (I'm afraid that I didn't catch anyone's name, except for Pauline Kael's and Kenneth Tynan come to think of it, because I was brushing my teeth**) seemed to be suffering from that peculiarly contemporary fear that wot wiv that internet and all this dummingdown, our culture is getting diluted. 'Where are the heroes of criticism? Without them who will keep the barbarians gated?' He didn't but might have lamented. But then the other fellow he was talking to reckoned that these hero-critics had never had much sway outside of ivorniversity and that this species still flourishes in its natural habitat. For the little it's worth I think that there's still plenty of great critical writing out there and if there's one thing that the internet definitely has done it's been to make it easier to find...perhaps it's just that it has become more difficult to make a living as a critic. But then there are a lot more literary festivals, talks etc. than there ever have been Isaywithnoevidencetobackitup.
Anyway, the point is that Pauline Kael was a great critic; accessible, important and widely read so she should definitely get an author's page.

Kit

*is there an animal famous for its hearing? I chose fruit bat because they have big ears and the whole echo thing.
** very definition of too much information.

newbooknewbooknewbooknewbooknewbooknewbook

It's an absolute pleasure to welcome Rhyll McMaster to our list - her first novel Feather Man is absolutely fantastic. If you read some of the reviews from Australia you'll see why we're so pleased to have found it. But I am not the person to talk, hopefully Cathy will be able to say a little more when she's not so busy.

But at the moment she is so I guess you'll have to make do with me. Who is very pleased at the moment, having discovered that if one uses mozilla firefox as their browser they don't have to type in the html code for each link manually. This is going so quickly! And speaking of links look there, on the right hand side, we've finally got some. Not having them was a real oversight, the blogosphere equivalent of turning up to a dinner party without a bottle of wine.

Two exciting new blogosphere discoveries that you'll find there are booklit and Vulpes Libris, excellent the both of them.

It's probably fair to say that there's not much that The Mail on Sunday and The Morning Star agree on, but we've found something:

Yes, a press cuttings envelope arrived this morning containing a favourable review from each organ for This May Help You Understand The World. You can read them here . There couldn't be better confirmation that Lawrence achieved the middle ground he was going for.

There was also a nice mention of it on Tuesday from BoringBlackChick .

This is more or less where we were on Sunday night. Underneath these actors' feet is the same red carpet that we walked along on the way the the premiere of Sleuth , tickets for which had kindly been givn to us by Paramount as publishers of, well, Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer. I believe I'm right in saying that it was a first red carpet experience for all involved. Each of our faces was duly scrutinized and then disregarded as un- (but hopefully not in-) famous, and we were not, for similar reasons, allowed to linger, blow kisses to the crowd or sign autographs. Once one has left the red carpet behind, going to a premiere is much like going to a regular cinema except you're not allowed to buy popcorn (packets are provided on the seat but it's just not the same. Having said that, my date still busied herself stealing more from other seats once she had finished her own), there are no adverts or trailers and the lead actors, producers and director all get on stage to thank you personally for having attended. I think that this should happen more often, especially at the places where one is allowed to buy popcorn but must take out a mortgage to get their hands on it.

And the film? I think I speak for the office when I say that we thought it very good - different from the original but similar enough to make each of us grab a copy to read and compare afterwards...

Kit

Don't Forget!

Lawrence Potter will be appearing at the Peckham Literary Festival fro a Q&A session this evening at the Review Bookshop . Begins 7:30.

Excitement in the office this morning, tho' I can't yet say any more. This, coupled with my fiveish cups of coffee had made me rather jittery by midday and there's nohing better for calming the nerves than a spot of indexing .



Are there any rules for what you can and can't include in an index? The previous one that I did was pretty straightforward; words like 'George Bush' went in and words like 'and' were left out. The book this time is Horribly Awkward and is posing more difficult questions. For instance, I decided that I would only include 'real people' (I think that phrase should always be between inverted commas) and not characters. But then come challenges to the dogma: I'd ideally like to include Royston Vasey, How could one leave Homer, Marge et al. out from the index of a book on contemporary comedy? And is there really going to be an entry marked thus: 'Brown, Roy Chubby p.67'?

Whatever decision we make, it's going to be a long index. Comedians, you see, do not, sit happily in their own chapters like good little boys and girls but keep popping up in each others' spaces. Then there are people like Simon Pegg and Rob Brydon who don't have chapters of their own so just seem to muscle in on everyone else's...

In other news, I've begun my search for the best edition of 1001 Nights . Which is proving a lot of fun - that last advisedly, I'm aware that this might not be everyone's idea of amusement - I rarely get to walk into bookshops in civilian mode. Indeed, I didn't this time either, so quickly: Foyles is great because it has loads of our European writers in its fiction section, Blackwells Charing Cross is great for making The Bookaholics' Guide one of its Christmas picks and Waterstones Putney similarly, because it has lots of The Flea Palace and Chocolate and Zucchini .

But back to the 1001 nights - it seems that there's three major translators: Antoine Galland, the man who introduced the stories to the West, Richard Burton, who was not, as I thought for a tantalising moment the same Burton who wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy but is still pretty gosh darn interesting and Husain Haddawy, who is , I think, contemporary. Oxford World Classics do the former (The first English translation of the former, I mean), Penguin the latterish and Everyman the latterest. There is also a version of the Burton with an introduction by AS Byatt by Random House. Oxford World Classics is the only complete text the other two are 'Tales from' but are still pretty hefty. The problem is, I had imagined that there would be a deluxe edition with pictures so that if I were ever to play a favourite uncle role, I would be able to stop during the narrative and ask 'does anyone want to see the pictures?' ...

Another week another party, this time the Sebald lecture , which, along with the Independent Foreign Fiction prize is the most high profile literature in translation event of the year. More on that further down.

News first:

The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs is due another round up:

Peter Stothard (Literary editor of the TLS) used it to read up on Sherlock Holmes sites among other things, Bookseller Crow on The Hill has been selling it , it has been mentioned by librarians here and here , and perhaps most excitingly of all, it has been reviewed on the Complete Review without a grade . I await confirmation that this is a first.

and also

A new author page for Ivan Illich .

Back to the party. It began with readings from six prize winners from all across the world, I especially the one that won the Rossica prize but they were all excellent and the thing about the Purcell room in Queen Elizabeth Hall is that the seats are actually quite comfortable so one could listen to six readings quite happily.

Then came the Sebald lecture itself, this year given by Marina Warner . It was splendiferous, bouncing around between the work of Sebald itself, 1001 nights, via inanimate objects, talismans, the Pitt Rivers museum and a talking umbrella. I'm pretty certain that at one point I saw sparks flying. It also inspired me to a new project: I don't own a copy of 1001 Nights and it's one of those books one should have, if only to leave to a favourite nephew in their will. So in the run up to Christmas I shall spend a portion of my weekends dedicated to finding the very best edition - booksellers beware - I fully intend to be one of THOSE customers...

Kit

I left the office on more of a cliff hanger than I meant to last night – when I came into the office this morning I was looked at expectantly: a prize won perhaps? Or a great deal with a major chain? No, the answer is more prosaic:
I had just begun to edit a really good book.

But first thing's first, yes I was allowed in to the Paramount offices but no, they did not mistake me for an actor. More of a delivery boy, which is what I was as I meekly left my package at reception. Although if Hollywood action movies have taught us anything it's that there is always a very good chance that the person manning the reception desk of an office building at night is not, in fact, a security guard but an international terrorist so I suppose that being meek and quick was exactly the thing to do...

But back to the really good book . It is, as those who just followed the link will already know, The Streets of Babylon by Carina Burman as very recently translated by Sarah Death and it is an absolute joy to work on.

The Streets of Babylon ( Which was contracted quite a while before I arrived at MB and about which I knew very little) introduces us to Euthanasia (She would have preferred Ariadne or Malvina) Bondeson, successful Swedish novelist, soon to be amateur detective and a wonderfully infuriating narrator, as she and her beautiful companion Agnes arrive in London for the 1851 Great Exhibition. She is a properly top drawn character, as engaging as anybody I've read in contemporary fiction recently. Whether she is admitting her own frailties:

'I can reveal to my dear readers my difficulties in finding my way in strange cities. Even in Stockholm, my hometown, it is not always easy. I am neither inattentive nor stupid, but my surroundings spin like a cogwheel in my head. I presume it is all to do with the rotation of the Earth.'

'Words are a necessity for my comprehension of the world. That is why I talk a lot'

or describing English foibles:

'Perhaps the explanation for this interminable tea drinking is the possession of so many colonies, whose economy one wishes to support. '

She's just marvelous.

Of course Euthanasia can't take all the credit, the author Carina Burman and the translator, Sarah Death should probably take some. They've produced a text that seems to me to have just the right measures of scholarship - the book apparently owes a lot to the work of the 19th century Swedish writer Frederika Bremer who both Burman and Death revere and on whom both have written academically – and entertainment – it's pacy and funny.

Anyway, I can rest happy this weekend because I know that I've got old (but still 'slender and agile') Euthanasia to get back to.

Kit