If at first....

One of these days, I'll be able to look back on the struggle, and I mean struggle, to persuade readers, reviewers and booksellers that Feather Man is exceptional.

But today, a glimmer of light appeared from a bookseller in Massachusetts, who is recommending Feather Man for the Book Sense pick in September.

'This beautifully written and disturbing Australian coming of age novel grabbed me from the first page. Sooky struggles to overcome her difficult childhood, with a father who abandoned the family, an emotionally distant mother and abuse by the one person to whom she felt close. The effects of this childhood are powerfully portrayed as Sooky moves from relationship to relationship and from Brisbane to London. It is her growing sense of herself as an artist which balances the pain.' Nancy Felton, Broadside Books, MA

It made me return to the first page of a novel which is the most successful Marion Boyars Publishers have ever published - and I expect you would not guess unless I gave it away:

'They're out there.
Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.
They're mopping when I come out the dorm, all three of them, sulky and hating everything, the time of day, the place they're at here, the people they got to work around. When they hate like this, better if they don't see me. '

This is the Chief on page one of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Eat your heart out - booksellers who do not want to read past the first chapter of Feather Man because it is strong. See what the world would have missed if this ethic governed all reading.

To make Feather Man a success right now is similar to a mental image I kept in my head for over five years when I took on this down at heart (then - not now!) company. The mental image was of three figures - 0.00 - and in my mind our front window was decorated with them, triumphantly, with no other message. This was supposed to represent our financial situation - ie no debt! And when it happened (which it did), I felt triumphant in the extreme. So battles are what life is - and they are sometimes what makes it worthwhile.

Catheryn

Kit's LECP Mark 2

Well, I didn't expect to be quite as accurate as all that. Many thanks to Mark at RSB for flagging up the success although I should say that it was not so much boredom that drove me to do this as the realisation that, in my continuing Onix odyssey (updating the whole backlist), I was beginning to claim that we had exclusive rights for Hubert Selby titles in Gabon, (undoubtedly an important territory, but not perhaps quite as relevant as Great Britain) and that I needed some distraction.

Today, (to continue my fascination with Arno Schmidt) I found myself typing the following:

'A powerful science fiction parable set in 2008. Europe has suffered from a devastating atomic holocaust. In an effort to save their science and culture, the 8 great powers have settled their best and brightest on a jet propelled island, affectionately called 'The Egghead Republic'... The exuberant wit, humour and invention displayed by the author makes this a highly entertaining vision of the future.' The blurb to The Egghead Republic. How great does that sound? Jet propelled!

But to business:

tonight it's Turkey (about whose literature I know quite a lot) against Croatia (less so)









Turkey

Elif Shafak (Striker)
Latife Tekin
Maureen Freely (Who has surely earned a residency qualification)
Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Kemal (In goal)

Now, I'm excited by this team. Not only is it dominated by Marion Boyars authors; the class of Elif Shafak, the energy of Latife Tekin and the tactical nous of Maureen Freely, it's anchored by a recent Nobel Prize winner and there's a very safe pair of hands in goal (in Turkey, they study his technique in school).








Croatia

I had a lot of help in constructing this team, many thanks to my super scouts Mark and Steve.

Miroslav Krleža (captain)
Dragutin Tadijanović (In goal)
Dubravka Ugresic (striker)
Clarice Lispector (A naturalised Croatian - passport awarded hastily)
Tin Ujević (Another one of these utility players)

This is a team that I suspect would revel in the 'Dark Horse' tag. So that's what I'm going call them. The captain is author of the 'Croatian War and Peace' so we can expect him to be a supremely hard worker in addition to his undoubted talent - he's one of these players well respected by fellow professionals without achieving the renown of some. The striker is better known in the UK, and is well regarded for her passion and bravery in the challenge. Clarice Lispector brings some Brasilian flair, but is notorious for only playing really well for short periods. Again I know less about the other two writers except that they have plenty of talent and that for some reason I tend to play poets in goal.


So. With this prediction I really have to go with what I know and what clinches it for me is the understanding of the Turkish team: not only do three of the players play together at club level, but Freely should help Pamuk translate seamlessly into it ( I really didn't think that I'd find a football pun for literary translation). But I can't see Croatia not scoring...

2-1 to Turkey.


Kit

It works!!!!!

Now, Croatia against Turkey. I've got one team covered...

Kit's Literary European Championship Predictor

Everyone else seems to be having more fun then me at the moment: Catheryn is busy inviting people to the launch of Victoria and Lucinda's Flavour of the Month, and Rebecca is either reading, or researching charity shops or things music related (more on the latter another time).

But fortunately I have football to keep me going. I am thoroughly enjoying the 2008 European Championship and not solely because England aren't in it. It has now got to the quarter finals stage, and the matches are getting much more difficult to predict (not that anyone who watched the Czech Republic/Turkey game would claim that the group matches were exactly predictable). To help, I have turned, as I often (always) do, to books.

I have developed a system: literary five a side. Five 20th century (otherwise it gets too difficult) authors from each country in question are pitted against each other and then a judgement is made (by me) as to who would win. Marion Boyars authors will feature prominently of course - thank god that the French are out, that would have made for some very difficult decisions.

So tonight it's Germany vs Portugal.

Kit's teams:








Germany

Heinrich Böll
Peter Weiss (striker)
Gunter Grass(who was trained rather energetically in his youth)
Arno Schmidt (who has oddly popped into my life fairly frequently of late. Not only did a nice man called Dirk order a copy of The Egghead Republic for a student prize giving but then the next day he appeared in a completely unrelated book that I was reading. In the book he went to visit James Joyce. Joyce was rude, apparently. After such a strong coincidence, I've got to play him.)
Erich Maria Remarque (to play in goal)












Portugal

José Saramago
Fernando Pessoa (who is a very useful pick because he can play in a number of different positions)
Eugenio de Andrade (in goal)
José Cardoso Pires
Mariela Gabriela Llansol

Right, so how does this pan out? They're certainly both brilliant sides, I defy any team not to score a few goals with the creative talent of Saramago and Pessoa in the team. But then, Pessoa, in spite of his versatility, has been known to be fairly anonymous for long periods... I'm not that familiar with the final three players although I'm assured that on their day they can be as good as anyone. The big question for Portugal is whether they'd simply be a collection of great players or a great team.

For Germany on the other hand, I suspect that their teamwork would be their strength. With the two Nobel Prize winners, Böll and Grass, in the engine room they would not want for energy, and Weiss and Schmidt, with their unusual playing styles, would be a handful for any defender. There might be question marks about the goalkeeper, does he have the stomach for a fight (sorry)?

Nevertheless, Kit's literary predictor says that in spite of a brace from Saramago, Germany prevail 3-2.

Tonight we shall see if I'm right...

Kit

My reaction to the petrol shortage

I usually drive the short distance from home to the office daily, since the car is also used for huge publicity mailings and supermarket shopping for our family. But as soon as the tanker drivers declared their industrial action, I felt a genuine who cares attitude descend on me. So I took to my bicycle. And I walked to the Farmer's Market.

People who wonder why this literary list suddenly has two fabulous cook books on its list, need some explanation. I am a keen cook, and find it relaxes me after a week of proof reading and managing a company. This weekend I bought asparagus, gooseberries and goat's cheese (and other things) - and cooked a broad bean and feta cheese and bean salad, a gooseberry and apple pie / crumble with cinnamon topping (I made too little pastry for a top layer and decided that a crumble of brown sugar, butter and cinnamon would work - it did), a quiche with asparagus, broccoli and goat's cheese and some spare ribs marinaded for a day, and a potato salad. All ingredients were carried home by me in a very unglamorous shopper with wheels which I also used to take our books into the London Book Fair.

At the bottom of the shopper, before going to the market, were six library books. I read The Outcast by Sadie Jones, and will hopefully read another two books in the evenings this week.

So, I hope you'll see that I practise what I preach - reading and cooking. And I managed to leave the car at home this morning too, and the bike is waiting to take me home, perhaps in a rain storm, but who cares... Catheryn

New Website!

When I said that I'd been thinking about the internet, this is what I meant. Catheryn had the idea for something white and opinionated a few weeks ago and here is the result. I shan't add much here as there are already a number of essays over there. Including one on designing the website. We plan on changing the essays at regular intervals, to keep up interest. AND we're involving everyone, even Rebecca makes an appearance.

But that's not all the news, The Streets of Babylon has been getting attention all over the place:


here

here

here

and I had a great exchange with Glenn at International Noir. A very fine blog.

Kit

Oh, and if anyone was interested, I was an hour late for the thing at Bethnal Green

summer rushes

Catheryn's just pointed out that I'm still not blogging very much at the moment. I have , however, been thinking plenty about the internet recently... but that will have to wait or else I'll be late for the thing. Just. waiting. for some files to uploooooaaaaad. There, finished (new B-format [198x129, 7.99] edition of The Concubine of Shanghai, loadsaorders)!

Anyway, much more interesting than anything I'd say is this Rhyll McMaster interview with Anthony Thwaite* .


Right, does anyone know how to get from Putney to Bethnal Green in fifteen minutes?


Kit

*I do of course mean Mark

Puzzled

In the Guardian G2 today is a long article on new names in fiction. In amongst it, is comment from book journalists and editors - Joel Rickett of the Bookseller is one and he says that literary fiction is the hardest category, as books tend to be one offs, and writers do not repeat themselves, unlike thriller writers for example.

This got me thinking. If this was really true, we would not have managed to establish a single writer from this house, since I really do find most thrillers so similar that I cannot be bothered to read them - let lone publish them. So, if Joel is right and I am wrong, then I have to re categorise our successes as a publishing house.

So here goes -

Hubert Selby Jr writes about poverty, lust, guns and self destruction - so he must be a sadistic thriller writer - a kind of hunt the morality instead of the killer book (although he does have characters kill people - quite satisfactorily sometimes - for example, using Coca Cola).

Hong Ying is definitely a historical romance writer - everyone knows that Julian Bell was a hunk. And The Concubine of Shanghai has a woman rise through the ranks using her beauty, seductive skill and of course, involvement with Triad gangs in 1930s Shanghai - perfect. Or maybe she isa Mills and Boon type romance writer. I'm in a dilemma here.

Elif Shafak - well, it is getting tricky now. Family saga does not really represent what happens in a multi occupied house in Istanbul (The Flea Palace). But it will do - and the dwarf and the large woman is The Gaze are also in a relationship so that makes is OK.

And what about Sadomasichism for Accountants by Rosy Barnes - maybe we will just have to invent a new genre - completely intoxicatingly funny but does not fit in any category novel.

One up to Joel.

Catheryn

Summer time!

A little while ago, we thought we would give an idea to Waterstone's - I used to be a production manager in a very large retail design company, and I remember with great fondness a trip to Munich with two Debenhams executives to pass on press their new carrier bags when the chain was re launched. We visited a Fairground after a lively session at the famous beer festival, and I went down a helter skelter on a rush mat sandwiched between these two execs. very, very fast.

We have not heard from Waterstone's about their reaction to this bag design, but if you see it around this summer, you'll know where it came from!

And Vulpes Libris have a stonking review of FEATHER MAN, posted today by Lisa - so THANK YOU! (http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/)

Back blogging

I haven't blogged in ages, strangely enough in inverse proportion to the amount of time that I've been spending in the office. The reason for both is that I have been doing extracurricular work which Catheryn has kindly allowed me to do here. It's fair to say that it's been something of a departure for me: I now know the difference between a cinnammon and a blue teal, the varying pitfalls of black and red kites (always my favourite bird - possibly due to the proximity of our names) and the many different ways that inserting pictures into text in Indesign can throw all the page alignments out of wack. It didn't help that the late night work coincided with the best weather of the year so far. On one occasion during a particularly nice sunset, which I was missing, a member of the general public knocked on the window to insist that I stop working and come out to enjoy the summer.

But now I'm back and doing other things, like blogging. And this should begin with news - we have, as some will already be aware, contracted an exciting new book by Rosy Barnes: Sadomasochism for Accountants, which it now strikes me I should have done a web page for – I will do tomorrow. We're already enjoying working with Rosy, the whole project should be a lot of fun.

The Streets Of Babylon has begun to get some attention in the US: in the Library Journal , Kirkus Reviews and blogcritics.org.

We've received our first actual copies of Victoria and Lucinda's Flavour of the Month and, to everyone's great relief, they look wonderful. This means that I've spent much of my time recently phoning up the major magazine conglomerates to check that I have the right names for our mailing lists - my relationship with the various receptionists at the big magazine buildings has gone from 'Sorry, what do want?' to 'Oh it's you. Which mag do you want this time?'. A great leap, I think.

Kit

I'm just back from a sales conference in New York, and found the city very up and full of energy. Not all of it good - for a country which claims to have a policy on energy reduction, you find a cinema on 42nd Street by Times Square where, to get to the auditorium (Number 20!) you go up five escalators. Each one passes by a floor of pumping rock music and a different fast food restaurant - all full on a Sunday afternoon - and all built in the expectation of many customers. The carbon footprint of that building alone would be the equal to half a high street in the UK. It's all so calm here, in comparison - OK , we are maybe a bit bland, but we have the same films (Forgetting Sarah Marshall - a good way to recover from the tension of presenting), and much of the same culture.

Bookshops - Barnes & Noble had more magazines and CD's and very little fiction backlist - they used to have rows and rows. The independents are flourishing, but the chains are cutting back on their stores. Amazon is the fastest growing customer of our distributors.

Our books - they loved Victoria & Lucinda's Flavour of the Month - our yummy mummy cookbook, with game, table design and entertaining. Thank goodness we did the conversions! Also very keen on Horribly Awkward, and I watched a little of the American version of The Office on the plane home - full of Dwight's and introversion. The American version of introversion just happens to be, well, loud....

Catheryn

Tessa is starting her GCSE's right now - the real things, not the mocks. First is her German oral, and she really did talk to herself in German in the kitchen for a couple of hours yesterday evening.

Her last practise included the following, when asked for her hobbies:

Ich sammle briefmarken. Ueden tag beteich.

When her teacher burst out laughing, Tessa claimed she had taught her the phrases herself, and she was bored of saying she watches Hollyoaks and likes shopping and parties (the truth). Her two phrases translated:

I collect stamps. I pray for a while each day.

I think she has kept her sense of humour and everything in perspective, but I may try to drag her to yoga tonight.....

Catheryn

By the grace of....

Over the weekend, I heard that the book printers Butler and Tanner had decided to close without paying the wages for their 287 employees.

We had a quote from Butler and Tanner for Victoria & Lucinda's Flavour of the Month, and it was about £7000.00 above the one we used, an overseas printer (SNP Leefung). I would have liked to use a British printer, as we do for all our paperback fiction and simple non fiction. But they were too expensive.

If I had decided to, we would I think, have lost the whole edition, as the advance copies for this book are due in a week. Our books would have been seized by the liquidators and sold to the highest bidder. Victoria Cator, Lucinda Bruce, and photographer Mark Cator, would have seen two years work vanish (although we could have printed elsewhere - the delay would have been heart breaking). Our own work would also have been put entirely at risk.

I do pity any authors who expected to see their new books from Butler and Tanner this week, and hope these projects can be allowed to leave the factory gate.... I also sympathise hugely with the workers, who have lost their jobs. They were not even well paid.

Catheryn

A journey into the past

Beginning with a fine review in the Independent on Sunday of The Streets of Babylon by Carina Burman.

and continuing with my onix dictated stroll through the backlist - some quotes:

'Firearms are instruments completely lacking in humour'

from Absent Without Leave by Heinrich Böll.

'I came into contact with camels on three occasions, and each occasion ended tragically'

The first lines of Voices of Marrakesh by Elias Canetti.

'In London, in a cellar, in a neighbourhood dive - the most squalid of unlikely places - Dirty was drunk. utterly so.'

Is how Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille begins.

and lastly:

'A mad animal
Man's a mad animal
I'm a thousand years old and in my time
I've helped commit a million murders...'

The first four lines of a short soliloquy performed (poorly, but with worrying relish) by myself in an amateur production of Marat Sade by Peter Weiss whilst still a fresh faced student...

Kit

Back from the Bookfair

and what fun it was... but first:

Helen Oyeyemi has written an excellent review of Feather Man in the New Statesman. It's a thoroughly insightful view of the book and hopefully will help it into the hands of many more people.

And back to the fair, my third and by far the busiest I've been to. There are plenty who find it exhausting, and it is tiring, and plenty who find it symbolic of the less romantic side of publishing, and lots of business does get done, but it's also a gigantic building filled for three whole days with people from all across the world whose common trait is that they are very enthusiastic about books. That, for types like me, makes it a very exciting place to be. Firstly there are the people who you only ever meet once a year (or twice, if you go to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which I haven't), then the people that you meet for the first time; all they want to talk about is books. And then give them to you to read!

We had meetings with people from over a dozen different countries, heard about hundreds of books and committed to reading enough over the next few months to stock a particularly cosmopolitan library. The British Council, English PEN, the Arts Council and more did an amazing job organizing a whole bunch of events, filling gaps in the schedule nicely. And then there's the parties, where there are even more people to meet and talk about books and, of course, gossip about other people who like to talk about books but aren't there.

Although it is possible that I got overexcited; I did apparently introduce myself twice in two days to the same prominent publisher, and was constantly surprised by meetings that had been arranged a long time before.

And now comes the sifting, which is, unfortunately, a lot more solitary...

Kit

This is an entry about what writers, mainly fiction writers, do when they create the world their book takes place in.

They do not, necessarily, present the reader with the world as they already know it. They usually have some idea of the dangerous places their fiction is taking them. Not all stories are ones with happy endings.

I'm writing this since another person has told me they could not read past the beginning of Feather Man. The first one was the person who was judging the Waterstone's New Voices, which Feather Man was short listed for. In both cases, because the book opens with a young girl being persuaded into a sexual act by an older man (who does not actually go as far as he could - guys, this is blog, open to all readers, so I will not be more specific here), they stopped reading. Yes, it is unpleasant, but then books are supposed to open up worlds beyond the readers experience.

So, when we publish books by Turkish writers, we expect readers to read about djinns and spirits as if they were quite normal, as they are in Turkish culture. When Hubert Selby Jr tells of the life of a prostitute, in Last Exit to Brooklyn, we do not pre judge.

So, please, please, read past page 12 of Feather Man and find out why Rhyll has won a major prize in Australia, and had the most wonderful reviews. Discover how a young girl, who men mistreat, actually manages to get her own back. And how she may or may not have achieved the impossible - managing to stand on her own two feet.

Getting ready

I'm sort of getting excited about the London Book Fair. We've done our rights guide, we've designed our posters (and printed them) for the stand, and here are three for you to admire.






We have printed most of our Autumn books, and advances will be on the stand. The major production here was Victoria & Lucinda's Flavour of the Month - 275 x 210 mm (over 10 inches tall to those who like to visualise in imperial) with full page photographs by the talented Mark Cator.

Rhyll McMaster won the prestigious Barabra Jefferis award in Australia for FEATHER MAN, and we are working very hard to get her to a festival here. We have teamed up with the Literary Ventures Fund in the USA, who pick 6 or so books from independent presses a year, and back them with increased marketing and publicity. It's a new way of working - if the book sells then we repay the investment, like venture capitalists. When they picked FEATHER MAN, I was interviewed by phone, and it was exaclty like being in the Dragon's Den - totally draining and every term depended on my immediate response.

And we've also signed our contract with 2waytraffic who develop Who Wants to be A Millionaire and You Are What You Eat for This May Help You Understand the World, so it becomes a major TV brand. We are hoping that Lawrence Potter can be the presenter, and we are tinkering with the follow up book.

The Concubine of Shanghai by Hong Ying will be in a £7.99 format by July to tie in with the Olympics, having sold so well in C format (unusual but true - ask Waterstone's!).

Our sales kits have arrived in the USA and the only way I can cope with doing them is piece meal - so over 3 or 4 weeks they gradually take shape in the office. I have the same approach to building the list - mid August is a flashing beacon in my mind, since by then I need a new American list for 2009 fully formed and contracted, with covers arrived at after many, many versions in house, so the book hits its market.

Not all is totally fabulous - we are still waiting for reviews of Spring books, and can see that some large publishers have similar problems. But I think small can be beautiful, since success here goes a long, long way.

plugs and bilingualism

Lee Rourke, whose book Everyday is published by Social Disease, has written very nice things about us on the Scarecrow blog. Which was a very nice thing to start the week with, I can only second his recommendation of Blue of Noon.







Which brings me nicely from one translation from the French to another: we are trying something new this spring. Banquet of Lies will be published in a bilingual edition, with the French alongside the English. It forms a part of our ongoing attempt to bring translation, and the issues that surround it, to the fore. We have actually done this before; Paris by Julian Green is bilingual and has done very well for us over the years. It got us to thinking: if we have a very good French text and a very good translation (by Frank Wynne) why not do it again? It's a great book to do this with; there's lots in the text that wasn't particularly easy to put into English and so many places where Frank has made the choices that are so important to the translator's art. It's been a fascinating book to work on in this way, I'm agog to see how it gets received.


Kit

On Onix and Selby

We have recently come across an exciting* new way to file and present our book information. It's called Onix and involves tags. We are being helped by a very nice man named Robin, who has been extremely patient with me as I keep sending him incomplete files along with the book admin equivalent of 'are we there yet?' messages.

Unfortunately, for a company that's been around a little while, with something of a back list, updating every single piece of info about every single book into a sophisticated new system is not a small task. But on the other hand, it does mean that one gets to delve into the backlist, which usually proves fruitful. Today was the turn of Hubert Selby to get Onixed, which turned up the following useful quotes:

From The Demon:

"There is only one source of energy for my
hate," he said, "and that's me. And there's only one ultimate destination
for my hate and that's me." which I shall use when stuck on overcrowded tube, or blocked on an escalator trying to get to said overcrowded tube.

From an excellent piece last year by Tony O'Neill:

A book that can divide people along such extremes is usually doing something right. While not comfort reading, The Room is essential reading, and a piece of art that will leave an impression on your soul. As one Amazon reviewer succinctly put it: "Literature is not meant to be safe or easy. Go buy a copy of VC Andrews if that's what you're looking for."

which last bit I shall use for finding out who VC Andrews is/was

and from a Telegraph obit by Peter McRae:

His next book, Requiem for a Dream (1978),
contained Selby's favourite opening line: "Harry locked his mother in a
closet."

which I shall use for proving in conversation that Selby had a wonderful sense of humour.

Kit

*well... perhaps not for everybody

Desks and Stockhausen

It's been a while since I blogged, much has been going on. Two, almost three books off to press, a translation seminar, books coming in which then have to be mailed out... there are times when it seems life is little more than frames on computer screens and the imaginative use of cardboard boxes (we have recently developed a new, environmentally friendly way of sending out review copies).

Catching up:

Artforum have done an excellent tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen

Mark Thwaite has also reviewed Stockhausen on Music. Both featuring Robin Maconie prominently.

I went to a translation seminar organized by the British and Arts Councils and many others, the first time anyone has thought to get a group of publishers and translators in a room to discuss how to edit translated manuscripts. Being big on translators we think it's a very good idea, and hope more similar events happen in the future.

With reference to earlier posts, it's a blessing that a photo of my desk was not posted for all to see. It's a disgrace and has been, wherever I have had one, for the last twenty years or so. These fantastic roomy ones just seem to give me more opportunity to make piles, creating a minature paper Gormenghast.

It was also nice of Catheryn to make clear that 'twas not me who spent the mid eighties being sold by Olivetti. My name, usually so pleasantly isolated, has been popping up everywhere recently, twice at my old employ: here and here and even in the crime pages. I'm just waiting for the London Book Fair passes to arrive, confusing my gender as usual...

Kit